Implementing Malta's European agenda

One of the biggest challenges facing Malta in the April 12 general election, and after, is not only to achieve European Union membership but also, following a positive result, to ensure it continues to obtain the optimum results for Malta.

According to Michael Frendo, who represents the Government side in the national Parliament at the Convention on the Future of Europe (the other Maltese delegates are Rev. Professor Peter Serracino-Inglott and Opposition Leader Alfred Sant), while the focus now is to get Malta into Europe "after May 1, 2004, our challenge will be to ensure that we make a big success of membership. I am very confident that this will be the case and that very quickly people would not even imagine a Malta outside the European Union."

This would require Malta, among other things, to ensure that we have a political class which can live up to those challenges, he added. At the moment, however, the overriding task facing the electorate is to get Malta into Europe.

"It has become a task, of course, where people need to vote twice," Dr Frendo added. "Unfortunately for Malta, the will of the electorate is very clearly being ignored by the second largest party in the country. I think this is very unfortunate for Maltese democracy.

"We have a situation where the leader of a major party is saying, in a very undemocratic way: 'I will not heed the will of the people.' I think that is a dramatic statement. So, we will have to vote again in elections to make the March choice happen, to put into effect that choice and implement the decision of the referendum.

"The focus is how we are going to get this through, how Malta is going to make it to Athens on April 16 to sign the treaty and be one of the ten new accession countries, becoming a member on May 1, 2004."

In many of his presentations Dr Frendo likes to use the image of the Maltese falcon. "In reality, we need to be sharper, more focused and swifter. If we are sharper and swifter, we will be more successful, especially within the EU, because the reality of today's world is not that the big fish will eat the small fish, which is what a lot of people are afraid of, but that the faster fish will eat the slower fish. Being a small country can be a strength for we can be nimble enough and sharp enough to be successful."

Malta's agenda as an EU member forms part of the Nationalist Party's electoral programme, Dr Frendo pointed out. "One item on the agenda is to strengthen our tourist sector, which I think will be helped by being members of the EU. In my view, we should find niche markets in the tourist sector as well, particularly in sports and cultural tourism, because these can also create year-long tourism which will help our industry in the lean periods.

"Secondly, I think we need to develop an IT-related sector. The agreement with Microsoft is important here. It can create an industry around Microsoft products and membership of the EU will also help make us more attractive as an investment location in this high value added sector.

"We also need to improve the export ability of our smaller industries. If you look at the export figures of this country, STMicroelectronics is still a dominant force and we need a big thrust to ensure that smaller businesses, particularly once we become members of the EU, are able to exploit not only the European market but also the other markets with which the EU has got free trade agreements. This should be a major thrust of the next five years."

Dr Frendo also mentioned two other important areas that generate significant income for Malta: financial services and the maritime sector. "There are challenges there as well.

For example, in the maritime sector we have a tremendous challenge to try and attract ship management companies and shipping banks because at the moment we are just doing part of the range of services we can potentially offer, which is ship registration."

A final point Dr Frendo mentioned was the importance for Malta to present itself as a European actor in the Mediterranean. "We must exploit the Mediterranean dimension and this is not at the expense of the European dimension. They go together and they strengthen each other."

Turning to the importance of strengthening the political class, Dr Frendo said: "One of the effects of Malta's membership will be that the political class in Malta will be facing new challenges. Many people are not aware that because a function of national parliaments is being postulated in the new architecture of Europe, the parliamentarians we will be electing on April 12 will be involved in the European process even in the national parliament in Valletta.

"The ministers, who will be chosen by the prime minister from the elected candidates, will not only be sitting around the Cabinet table in Castille and on the front benches in the House of Representatives. When their particular portfolio is being discussed in Brussels, these ministers will be sitting around the table with ministers from the other EU member countries deciding on European policy, which will affect us and the rest of Europe.

"There is a challenge here to ensure that our political class is prepared enough and confident in its subject enough, able to discourse and to carry out politics in the European ethic. This is another reason why, in my view, people should consider very seriously:

"1. to vote for the PN; and

"2. to vote for politicians who are able to give this contribution because the PN has dedicated a major effort in the European arena."

It would be disastrous, Dr Frendo went on - even if we were to see a situation, which is of course impossible, that Labour would be in government and would join the EU, because this is completely excluded - to have a party that is not convinced of membership, particularly in the first five years of membership.

"In our first five years in the EU we need a PN government, which has negotiated this accession package with the EU. It is the party that has been involved in this process since 1987 when it was elected, but has been looking forward to this since 1979, when Eddie Fenech Adami, as leader of the party, had presented a motion to the Executive saying that Malta would seek membership if the PN is elected to office.

"The PN is therefore committed to making a success of membership. We must not only aspire to achieve membership but also to make a success of membership. And that depends on the party and the people we elect."

Although there has been constant coverage of the contribution Malta is making to the Convention on the Future of Europe, Dr Frendo, who has made no fewer than 11 speeches, apart from contributing in working groups, is particularly emphatic about his submission of a solidarity clause to the convention.

"The European Convention is a very important development in European affairs. It is reformulating the EU's constitutional basis and it will come out with a text which, hopefully, will be the new constitutional treaty for the EU.

"The intention is to have an EU which will be as successful as it has been in the past 50 years and, in view of enlargement, to make sure that the Union's structures are able to sustain the new number of members - not just this first enlargement but other enlargements to come."

As a member of the convention, Dr Frendo said he represents a nation of almost 400,000 people in the same way as the persons next to him, including Germany's Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and Italian Deputy Prime Minister Gianfranco Fini, represent tens of millions of people.

"This already shows the added value which Malta gains in joining the EU as a small island state," Dr Frendo said. "We already have a voice around the table of Europe because we are accession countries and therefore we need to emphasise that, particularly in constitutional matters, but also in other matters as well, we have a voice which is equal to the larger states.

"That is not the case if we are out of the circuit, if we are not around the decision-making table. The European Convention is a prime example of this."

Referring to Mr Fini's interview in The Times on March 20, Dr Frendo said Malta's was not the contribution of an apprentice but the contribution of a fully-fledged participant in the exercise of those cultural, political, ethical and spiritual values that constitute the basis of the architecture of Europe.

"This contribution in my view is important also to show what Malta can do as a member. In the Convention, I felt a responsibility of carrying the whole image of the nation in terms of the political input in the convention because this is one of the first experiences of Maltese representatives being involved in European decision-making.

"We have made a number of contributions. We have spoken about national parliaments. One point I made was that we should not mix up the role of national parliaments with the role of the European Parliament and European architecture.

"I agree that national parliaments should be given a role in the new European constitution so that we will not have a situation where Brussels is on one side and national parliaments are on the other.

"In fact, seeking an integrated decision-making structure, it is suggested that an initiative from the Commission will be sent not only to the European Parliament and to the Council of Ministers but also to the national parliaments.

"These, through their House Select Committees for European Affairs, could discuss and actually react and send feedback to the Commission on their views on European initiatives. That would mean that national parliaments would be involved at the outset.

"More than that, national parliaments should also in my view be the entities which are also involved, perhaps not alone, but also with the European Parliament, in a political audit of the subsidiarity issue.

"When an initiative is being taken, national parliaments would be able to say whether - and this is also one of the conclusions of the Working Group on National Parliaments - that initiative is in breach of the subsidiarity principle, that is that decisions that are best taken at the level closest to the people should be taken at the local level.

"This is a new strength that national parliaments will have in the process. The proposal in the Working Group is that national parliaments, which actually register that they feel that something is in breach of the subsidiarity principle, will also be able to take that issue to the European Court of Justice if such a measure is adopted.

"The whole idea is to integrate national parliaments in the European architecture. I am very much in favour of that."

Another issue Dr Frendo mentioned which was also referred to by Mr Fini in his interview with The Times was that differences in the positions of constitutions in member states should be looked on as a strength and not a weakness of the EU.

"The fact that we have the issue of neutrality is not a weakness. Neutrality is another tool for foreign policy in the EU. There are a number of neutral countries in the EU and I think we should have a situation where we have countries with different constitutional traditions.

"Neutrality means that Malta, as a small state, is an excellent meeting place and is not a threat to anybody. Therefore, the diversity is actually a source of strength to the EU. There should be no issue of trying to make everything even but the unevenness of the realities I think is a strength which the Union can make use of."

The greatest emphasis Dr Frendo placed on his contribution to the convention was the concept of a solidarity clause. "The solidarity clause I proposed balances out the trend in the convention towards qualified majority voting and towards widening the Union's competences.

"Since we are constitutional architects, we need to have a situation of checks and balances. The solidarity clause states that the EU may give financial or other assistance to any member state that, in implementing any part of the new acquis that is being proposed by the Union, will actually endure a severe hardship.

"On that basis, therefore, you will have a safety valve. Rather than having a group of countries moving towards enhanced co-operation, and therefore moving towards creating different groupings within the EU, in the interest of community and the Union, we should try to make sure that everybody is empowered to move along with the changes. This clause would help countries that would face particular difficulties to move along as well with the trend of the Union itself without being left out of the process."

Dr Frendo is especially qualified to talk about the EU. After finishing his postgraduate in European Law at the University of Exeter in 1979, he continued to be involved in European issues. "I thought that Malta might start the process of joining the EU after 1981," he recalled. "Of course, I was off by about 20 years, but I have been following and working in the field since.

"My maiden speech in the Maltese Parliament, which I published in my book, The Future is Europe, was about the European Union. At the time I spoke about 'Joining the European Community to Consolidate our Democracy'.

"I thought that this was perhaps a bit out of date but recent events have shown it has suddenly bounced back as reality and, as a reason why we should join the EU - that our democracy will be strengthened."

Dr Frendo firmly believes that Malta's membership of the EU will bring about a sea change for the country. "We will have moved from colony to independence to community in the space of 40 years. It is a process of growing up; of a country reaching a level of maturity, where we are no longer that tiny, cute island with its own government, flag and national anthem, but as serious players in European and international affairs."

This is not to say Malta has not already made valid contributions internationally, like the Law of the Sea Convention and as a meeting place for the resolution of conflicts.

"We are not in the Caribbean or the Indian Ocean. We are in the Mediterranean, close to what is our major market and close to a reality which is becoming an increasingly united Europe: a Europe of 25 states when we join; a Europe of 28 states if Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria join; and, after that, the focus is the Balkans.

"We are looking at a Europe of more than 30 states. In this reality we cannot allow any of these countries to have a competitive advantage over us. We must be there competing with the rest.

"We would just have made it very difficult for ourselves to progress at the same rate they would otherwise be progressing. It is a tremendous opportunity for Malta that we should grasp... to vote for the PN and therefore to confirm the 'Yes' vote that the people have already made in the referendum."