In eight months' time, Malta is back to the polls. It will be a national election where all voters on our electoral register as well as some others can and should participate. It will be our first occasion to elect Malta's five Members of the European Parliament.

Tomorrow evening, the House of Representatives is expected to conclude its debate on the second reading of the bill providing for these elections.

Government and Opposition agree that our country will be participating in this election for the first time as a result of Malta's accession to the EU a month earlier. There will a good choice of candidates representing the country's political spectrum.

Government has decided against dividing the country into five electoral districts; instead the whole of Malta and Gozo will constitute one district. It will be one list of candidates, grouped according to the different political parties, for all electors to make their democratic choice. Exercising this right represents an extension of our sovereignty.

Speaking on this bill in Parliament last Tuesday, the Prime Minister expressed his satisfaction that Malta is going through a happy phase where both sides of the House were declaring publicly that they intend to work together to ensure that Malta will reap the best results from its EU membership.

The experience that has already been gained by Maltese MPs who are attending the European Parliament and its committees as observers is proving to be a positive learning experience and is confirming that Malta will be able to exercise its influence in a proactive manner within the EU institutions. This is very much the time to look ahead.

While one cannot quite forget what was said from the Opposition ranks up to just six months ago on the subject, the fact that both parties are prepared to work together in the national interest is a historic opportunity on which to lay new foundations for our country's future.

When the people of Malta vote in the European Parliament elections next year, they will be exercising their right to choose their own representatives in an institution that represents all of Europe. Not only will the European Parliament represent a European Union made up of 25 sovereign states but that Union is expected to expand even further in the years to come.

The visit among us last week by President Arnold Rüütel of Estonia highlights the extent of the enlarged European family - from this Baltic state in the north to our own Mediterranean State in the south of Europe.

The visit also highlights the different networking and co-operation opportunities that are open to all the member states, not least to the new acceding countries as with Estonia and Malta.

When the people of Malta and Gozo participate in the EU Parliament elections, they shall be using the electoral system to which they are well accustomed. Malta will use the system of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote.

We are not alone in making such a choice since the Irish use the same system to elect their national parliament and their MEPs. In Malta's case, it was important not to have the electorate exposed to different voting methods. We are used to our own system. It is one of the fairest possible and just as we have been able to choose a favourite candidate to whom to allocate our 'No. 1' vote and then make subsequent preferences in general and local elections for all these years, we shall have no difficulty to use the same system when voting for our MEPs.

Mentioning local elections, the law makes it possible, whenever there is an election for the European Parliament, to combine it with the local council elections and thereby avoid a situation where people go to the polls twice in three months. We have gone through our own learning experience in this respect when the last local council elections were held simultaneously with the referendum to decide on Malta's accession to the EU on March 8.

European Parliament elections in Malta will be held every five years starting in 2004, on the second Saturday of June, or on such other date as the Prime Minister may appoint. This means that these elections will be first held on Saturday, June 12, 2004. On that date all voters will be entitled to vote for our MEPs while in one third of the country, the electorate will also be voting that day, rather than in March, for the local councils which are to be renewed next year.

Apart from the usual electoral register consisting of citizens of Malta who are entitled to vote, non-Maltese EU citizens residing in Malta will have the right to vote as well as contest the European elections provided they are no longer entitled to vote in their country of origin (since no person can vote twice, even if that means voting in different member states) and that they go through the necessary procedures to register as voters in Malta.

For this purpose, our Electoral Commission will publish the EU electoral register to contain the list of all persons so qualified and registered. This register will in future also be used for our local council elections. The same principle applies to Maltese persons living in the other EU member states.

Following EU rules, the office of member of the European Parliament is incompatible with that of member of the House of Representatives or of a local council, or of any other similar institution or organ in another member state. A serving MP or local councillor may stand as candidate to the European Parliament, but if he or she is successful, then he or she would have to choose between the two. Not exercising a choice for five days means losing the European Parliament seat.

Within our local political scenario, it is likely that some candidates will be serving MPs and if they are elected to the European Parliament we can expect casual elections for filling up the vacancies created in our own Parliament.

Speaking during a recent political activity, the Opposition Leader made it clear that the Labour Party will be fielding a strong team of candidates for the European Parliamentary elections. Labour is expecting to begin preparing for these elections after its November conference which has to resolve the Don Quixote-Sancho Panza dispute, deciding definitively whether it now stands for Malta's EU membership or not.

In the meantime, the Opposition spokesman on EU affairs last week appealed for a strong turnout by the Maltese electorate at the European Parliament elections. Evarist Bartolo made the point that the fact that Malta would have the smallest number of MEPs (because of our size) and that they would be hard pressed to keep up with the volume of work should not discourage Maltese voters but should rather encourage them to back the Maltese representatives with a strong mandate.

The Prime Minister told the House that Government intended to keep working for Malta to have a sixth seat allocated to it in the European Parliament. That would place us on a par with Luxembourg and would ensure that there is a minimum threshold of representation below which no member state can go.

For Malta this remains an important issue, but whichever way it goes, with five or six MEPs, Malta will make its presence felt, and positively so. That is already our experience, although participation so far is on an observer status.

Our participation will be even more effective at the level of those committees where we take part where one is talking of around 40 members as opposed to 650 in the plenary sessions. Moreover the elected MEPs elected will join their respective political groupings: the European People's Party and the European Socialists (and of course the Greens if AD win a seat). Even at this level, Malta can exercise its influence and make its mark.

Structures within Malta's political parties as well as within our Parliament will in the coming weeks need to adapt to this new reality.

Another important appointment in the political and constitutional calendar has been scheduled... and that appointment is eight months away.

www.franciszammitdimech.com

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