This morning, the Nationalist Party General Council comes to an end with an address by Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami. It is a Council meeting that is addressing the challenges and opportunities facing our country on the eve of European Union membership.
The Nationalist Party is well equipped to make plans for our country's growth in Europe since the party did not have to backtrack on its policies. On the contrary, it is seeing the Labour Party bend over backwards to affirm that it would be disastrous for Malta to leave the EU just when, less than seven months ago, it was arguing that it would be disastrous to join!
The Nationalist Party has affirmed in clear terms that Malta should join the EU since at least 1979, when the Labour Party in government was simply stating that after the closure of the British base in Malta the "future beckons".
The Nationalist Party had then approved through its Executive Committee a motion indicating that the way ahead was for Malta to become an EU member and secure its future. Even as it worked on achieving independence for Malta in the early Sixties, the party was already envisaging membership within the Common Market, as it was then known. The policy was again discernable when a Nationalist Government in 1970 signed our country's association agreement with the European Community.
Just as Malta prepares to turn 40 when it celebrates Independence Day next year, Malta will have by then joined the EU as a country with equal rights with 24 other countries belonging to one family. Already from the beginning of the new year, we can benefit from the funds that will be made available to us to help us adopt different measures that are required for our country's own sake.
It is said that life starts at 40, and EU membership that precedes that birthday by just over four months represents the culmination of our sovereignty. Proposing membership was an expression of well deserved faith in our people's capabilities to work within the parameters of the larger family to which we belong.
When the people voted for that vision in the referendum last March and reconfirmed that decision in the general election in April, they were expressing their own self-confidence as well as reciprocating the trust bestowed on them by the Nationalist Party.
It took the Labour Party less than seven months since the election result to switch its policies and adopt a pro EU membership stance. It is a change of heart we had predicted even prior to the last election, even if it was then vehemently rejected.
We were aslo able to predict that the Labour Party would manage in its last general conference to overcome the hurdle of any last bastion of resistance to change. That has now come about and the Nationalist Party is pleased to see that the policies and vision that it had adopted consistently have been vindicated.
Having said that, Malta's joining the EU is not an end in itself but a beginning of a new era in our contemporary history, just as achieving Independence 40 years ago meant a new beginning as much as and even more than it meant the achievement of a target spelt out from the very foundation of the Party over 80 years earlier.
That explains why the party could choose with ease the theme of Malta's growing within Europe for its deliberations last Friday and today. Much will depend on our own capabilities and we are confident that we can and shall make it.
Comparisons with the challenges and opportunities facing us when we achieved Independence are clear. Forty years ago, it was 'predicted' that we would face an unemployment crisis, that our democratic system would not cope without the colonial strings and that in any case the time was not yet ripe!
These predictions have been proved wrong and Malta has since Independence been able to go through economic development and prosperity. That has not meant that it all happened without the need of adjusting and going through a delicate transition phase. Nor did it mean the absence of difficult situations, but our country has not merely survived and surpassed all the tests in the process, but also reached the stage where it would never look back.
It is again the time to look forward to the future with courage. There will be difficulties of transition. There will be the need to restructure components of our economic system and our democratic as well as administrative structures will need to adapt to the new working methods and parameters that EU membership brings along.
Moreover, we will face new challenges ranging from participation in the elections to the EU to introducing the euro as our national currency in the coming years.
It is comforting to see that there is national consensus on the decision made by the people twice this year. The Labour Party will however still need to prove that the choice it has made now is not merely one of convenience and opportunism.
Conviction over such issues can never be skin deep and in the future we shall have many opportunities to test for real Labour's new 'credentials'. In the national interest we wish that party well, as we have wished it to be able to resolve its own internal difficulties the other weekend and were only too happy to congratulate it when it managed to do just that.
In the document presented to councillors this weekend, the Nationalist Party has highlighted the need to address our country's image on three crucial respects: the embellishment of our country so that our own families as well as visitors can enjoy it; the safeguarding of our environment, especially to promote our own people's state of health; and promoting development in a sustainable manner.
The Party document makes a number of references to tourism. This sector calls for the attention of one and all as it represents a quarter of our national economy.
I find encouragement where the PN document asserts that Government needs to make a distinction between expenditure that is in fact an investment (in other words will lead to a return that is larger than what is put in initially) and that which isn't (that is, once spent, is never recovered).
Even in our times, when Government needs to reduce rather than increase the national debt, it is necessary for Government to ensure that investment, which yields returns, is increased rather than reduced, so that the country will still have positive prospects for its future, irrespective of the historic context in which we are operating. This applies in particular to tourism where we need to recognise that all money spent in this sector is an investment in our economy's most important sector.
Tourism is later referred to with regard to environmental and rural projects through which the Maltese and tourists alike will have a right to enjoy our country's natural beauty.
I am encouraged by the fact that the party document makes a lengthy reference to the various ongoing capital projects that are intended to provide a better Malta product to inhabitants and visitors alike.
In particular we need to proceed with the urban regeneration of the entire Grand Harbour area. The pace at which the Cottonera project, the Manoel Island and Tigne' development project as well as the Cruise Liner Passenger Terminal project is proceeding is positive and is vindicating the assertions made by Government not only about the need for such projects but also about the way in which they should move ahead.
These projects have now built a dynamic mechanism of their own and the fact that Government is being presented with further requests from all the consortia involved with new development ideas and options is in itself a healthy sign that indicates that not only will the present momentum be maintained but that we can also expect further growth in the coming years.
The new challenges facing us include issues that are related directly to our capital city, ranging from City Gate and the area outside that gate at one end, to Fort St Elmo at the other end.
Urban regeneration requires investment, which in turn breathes new life not only into a city that deserves to be further rehabilitated to reassert its history, identity and culture, but also into the national economy as a whole that requires new, creative thrusts of activity in the right direction. That will be part of our growing in Europe in the coming years.
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