MEPs' perks

The two letters I wrote about the EU's 'gravy train' must have niggled Mr George Debono (The Sunday Times, December 21) no end. The reasons could only be that those letters have revealed who would actually be benefiting handsomely from our country's membership of the European Union.

While to the rest of us - including most of those who voted for membership - the message is now clear": we have to learn to live "less comfortably", as the finance minister has declared.

Your correspondent tried to play down the enormous 'perks' which MEPs benefit from by saying that "people occupying important positions in most European countries receive perks". What he did not say was whether the 'perks' such people receive amount to so much more than their actual salaries as will be the case of Maltese MEPs - many times more than the actual salary, in fact!

George Debono also tried to cast doubts on the authenticity of the letter I had received from an MEP. He ended by saying that he will only believe the contents I revealed if I "supply the names". Not even Mr Ron Evers, the European Parliament's representative in Malta, had denied any of the information I gave when he replied my first letter (The Sunday Times, November 30). And he has kept silent after my second letter.

How can then George Debono question the authenticity of the 'perks' mentioned in the MEP's letter I had quoted? Still, I would be quite willing to show the letter in question in strict confidence to the editor, if Mr Debono will first publicly promise to publicly apologise for casting doubts on the existence of that letter, and hence on my integrity.

May I also suggest that your correspondent update himself on the British Conservative Party's EU policy under its new leader Michael Howard. Had he listened to the Shadow Foreign Secretary, Michael Ancram, speaking on BBC World's Hard Talk on December 22, he would have realised that there has been no change in Conservative policy, namely, a "Europe of nation states" as against a Federal Europe or a European super-state, as will be the case when the new EU Constitution is agreed to and ratified by all member states.

As regards my being "a lonely voice in the anti-EU wilderness", may I inform your correspondent that he would be doing me an honour if that was the case as I would have been the only one to have been proved right - that EU membership was going to bring misery to many, including people who had voted for membership, while benefiting the few. But George Debono is again hopelessly out of touch with what many people are sayimg even if they do not air their great disappointment in the press.

The 'new spring' heralded by the prime minister as a result of the pro-membership vote, during Dr Fenech Adami's last mass meeting, has already been forgotten. Ask government and parastatal employees what they think now about the 'benefits' they were promised, to now find that they have had to forego the traditional Christmas parties.