Topsy and Malta's EU turvy

"How old are you, Topsy?" asked Miss Ophelia.

"Dun no, Missis," said the girl.

"Don't know how old you are? Didn't anybody ever tell you? Tell me where you were born and who your father and mother were."

"Never had none. Never was born," grinned the girl.

"Never had no father, nor mother, nor nothin'. I was raised by a speculator, with lots of others."

There is a character in the pre-Civil War American novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, a nine-year-old Negro slave, who insisted that she was never born, she just happened. She never had a mother and a father. She was raised by a speculator, who dealt in a cosy trade in young kids sold as slaves in American Deep South.

Membership of the EU can hardly be termed as not having any parents to boast of.

The Nationalists in office fathered it. A democratic majority of the Maltese people provided a well-built mother. Alternattiva Demokratika helped with the delivery and hold your breath for the next outburst of gratitude from the Nationalists. Still, one wonders, was it all for real - did the father really mean to shoulder the grave responsibility, starting by preparing for it as in duty bound to do. The collective mother certainly hoped so.

Yet, who can blame chunks of the good-natured Maltese people for feeling fazed by the way parenthood has started? If no one brought up bright-sad little Topsy in the novel, other than a speculator, it is becoming more apparent that preparations for the demands of membership were in specific key regards little more than speculative.

One definite cost of membership was always going to be a push on prices of meat, meat products, and cereals. After conception and during the preparation for delivery, it was put out that Malta as an EU baby would be suitably protected in its infancy, giving it time to grow strong legs to carry it forward into the facts of euro life.

In not more than a few weeks' time, once stocks secured by careful importers who are good at planning are used up, expect the price of meat and meat products to shoot up dramatically, though chickens should cost less. The community will cope by changing its consumption pattern and there was never any other medium or long-term solution to that factor. But were the preparations for the impact effective - never mind the following process - as studied as they had been made out to be? The cushioning is likely to prove woefully thin.

In addition, it is late in coming and already almost strangled by ineffectual bureaucracy. Hard realists could say that one might as well get the negative effects over with. Thereby benefits that eventually come along, provided bungling bureaucracy does not stifle them as well, will taste sweeter. Perhaps, but in the meanwhile the harsh impact will cause howls and curses galore. Why make that prospect worse by revealing that Topsy was not alone in not being properly raised?

That question is triggered by the subsidiary legislation published to detail on how to implement the safeguard clause to protect local agricultural production should that be deemed necessary, and should Brussels agree. Advocates for the bureaucracy will argue that howls will always be the counter-note to the efforts to safeguard farmers and those who process the fruits of the soil, such as winemakers and others. Most coins do have two sides. But what can even start to craft some argument to justify the bureaucratic topsy-turvy that has greeted a fundamental aspect of EU membership - accession to the single market through the abolition of internal frontiers?

EU membership means that goods can move freely within the single euro market. Products can enter Malta from the length and breadth of the EU in the same manner that they can go from Malta to Gozo or vice-versa. That most basic facet of membership, however, has been made another Topsy. Confusion prevails, with regard to some medicines, as to whether what is allowed to move within the EU can be allowed to do so in Malta, once the intra-EU standard has been established in one of the other 24 Euro-colleagues. Also, Malta is still demanding that the invoice for meat imports from the EU has to be stamped by the official veterinary office in the supplying member country, to the bewilderment and anger of officials therein.

Teething trouble? Perhaps. But what about a key arrangement that should have started working at the first stroke of midnight heralding May 1 and membership - a smoothly functioning border inspection point? Products from outside the EU that reach Malta as their first port-of-call have to pass through a set procedure at a border inspection point.

Malta sources most of its imports from the EU but a sizeable chunk still comes from third countries. Hence, the need for it to clear the border inspection point which, like basic clothing for any baby other than Topsy, should be prepared well before delivery, takes place. Not so in Euro-Malta. Our border inspection point, importers have been told, will not be ready before May 24, over three weeks after Malta became a proud member of the union.

So, big deal? Depends how you view the fact that imports arriving from outside the EU have to be sent back or, if the transporters can wait, importers have to pay extra to them, plus additional Freeport fees.

It will all fall into place in the end, will it not? Perhaps. But does it have to be so topsy-turvy when there was so much time to prepare for it all? And does the bureaucracy have to get bigger and bigger once the membership pregnancy is over and slimming should commence?

Will Malta's Topsy ever be raised properly?