This week's Parliamentary debate on the Treaty of Accession was a study in contrasts. It started out with grim and severe words from the benches of the Opposition.

While the government side spoke of Malta and its future in Europe, Alfred Sant's Monday speech was negative and combative, digging into the past. It centred on the Opposition itself: what the Opposition will do, what it will not do, the wisdom of the Opposition, the unfairness meted to the Opposition, and so on.

Others evaluated the speech differently. In the words of that evening's Maltastar.com, "...at the end of Monday's parliamentary sitting it was more than clear who had risen to the occasion and who had shown the visionary way forward for Malta. And no one, except the diehard Nationalists, was in any doubt that that person was no one less than the leader of the Opposition and Labour Party Dr Alfred Sant."

Such words of praise did not discourage the emergence of more constructive contributions from Labour's side, whose tone became more conciliatory as the week progressed. By Thursday, the language was reasonable, especially the words from Labour's spokesman for European affairs.

Far from being scathing or contemptuous, Evarist Bartolo spoke of how the country is served best by unity and convergence. He spoke of a positive and constructive contribution from the Opposition, which will also hold the government's feet to the fire. "Malta would be sailing in new waters and the Maltese should not waste their energies fighting each other but should instead face the challenge together while respecting each other when they disagreed. This was a case of sink or swim together".

Monday

Parliament has a very straight-forward task. The people have chosen EU membership and now the country has to align itself to the Treaty of Accession, a path travelled by the 15 members, the same path that is being travelled by the other new members.

From the outset, the Opposition kicked a storm about what should have been seen as a necessary and important task: carrying out the people's mandate on the Treaty of Accession. Some of them interpret it instead as a threat to sovereignty. They fail to understand that the people of Malta chose freely to become part of the European Union and along with the other member states they accepted all EU rules, in the making of which Malta will participate directly. As the Prime Minister pointed out on Friday, the EU is no longer "external".

Early in the week, the Opposition's tone was pugnacious. Dr Sant left no doubt about his unyielding contempt for membership, even if we were reminded that the Opposition will respect the verdict of the people.

Digging up the past, the Leader of the Opposition showed that he is still in a state of denial, hanging on to his delusion that the No vote had carried the membership referendum. Using a term that brings up the Communist regimes that Labour governments had been so cosy with, he claimed in Parliament: "Whatever the government nomenklatura says, only 48 per cent of those who had the right to vote voted for accession. The majority of the Maltese did not believe in joining the EU." Really, Dr Sant, how long are you going to keep up this charade?

In none of the other accession countries was there a major political party that interpreted the referendum result in this absurd way, which includes even those who have departed into the next world as part of the No vote! If Dr Sant wants to be taken seriously, then he should stop this statistical heresy. In the heat of the campaign, Dr Sant tried to clutch at straws, presumably to prevent anybody within his party from challenging his position on the EU prior to the elections.

This was a mistake which certainly contributed to Labour's defeat. To keep on insisting on a line of reasoning that in today's world is so devoid of reason, is really getting stuck in a time warp that does the country no good.

Thankfully, we are told that the party will respect the verdict of the people. "The rules of elections in Malta are according to the Constitution. The MLP is ready to accept the decisions of the people because it is a democratic party and it respects the people's verdict." How nice it would be if it also respects reason and logic!

The theme of Dr Sant's message can be interpreted as one of a party that has had to come to terms with the verdict of a foolish or at least duped majority within the Labour party. The mission that Dr Sant seems to bestow on his party can perhaps be summed up in two words: damage control.

To save a nation that did not heed Labour's wisdom, the Labour Party is now in the business of salvaging a bad situation and limiting the damage that will be inflicted by membership. He seems to look on the EU as the adversary to be engaged, tackled and blocked for the sake of the working class. He appears also to concede that there are advantages from membership. Even so, those gains may benefit only a chosen few.

In short, "The Labour Opposition will help Malta withstand pressures from Brussels and also help Malta to derive all the advantages from EU membership so that those advantages are for the benefit of all, not just the chosen few."

For as long as it has graced the Opposition benches, the Labour Party has always painted a grim picture of life in Malta. Nothing will change in that respect. Negative portrayal of membership is set to continue as a fixture of Dr Sant's propaganda. The signing of the accession treaty did not turn the dream and vision into the dawn of a bright future that opens the door for growth and prosperity. For Dr Sant, it turned it into a burden.

As he wrote in his Wednesday column in The Times, "the commitments implied by Malta's accession to the EU became more immediate, more onerous. EU membership is no longer just a vision, a dream - it is now becoming a reality which has to be resourced, funded." EU membership is simply a mechanism for dishing out from what is ours, involving burdens.

In Parliament, he added, "the EU was presented to people as the Promised Land. The people were not given the right picture. The government will now face the consequences. The Opposition will be loyal to the people, speak the truth and act in the interests of the country."

The country came to a crossroad in the referendum and the subsequent election. It appears that the Labour Party is coming to its own crossroad, shedding its ambivalence and choosing whether to join in the national journey in the EU.

Employment

According to the latest Labour Force Survey, the private sector created a net 4,594 in new places of work over the 12 months ending in March. Along with 319 in new public sector positions, newly employed persons numbered 4,913. These new jobs absorbed a drop of 1,397 who were previously unemployed plus 3,516 in additional participants in the labour market. The unemployment rate declined by 1.1 percentage points to 6.6 per cent.

The LFS is subject to a sampling error and its results have to be interpreted with caution. But one is reassured that these positive trends are echoed in the ETC count of registered unemployed. Registrants numbered 7,321 in May, compared with 7,423 twelve months earlier.

The ETC-measured unemployment rate awaits the update of the ETC's administrative records of the employed and the complete labour force. However, on the employment front, the indications are heartening, especially given the traditional slow-down that occurs during periods of uncertainty, such as at election times.