A direct link with Brussels

At Europe Direct Malta, an office within a traditional town house in Hamrun, clients are greeted with a cup of coffee and a smile. The office is an information relay centre for the European Union, one of 400 similar points set up all over Europe last May. Rosanne Zammit met Maryrose Francica and Angele Giuliano who run the centre and discussed the concept of Europe Direct and what Malta stands to gain from EU membership.

A year following EU membership, many, including some of the staunchest pro-EU lobbyists, are disappointed. This was recently even admitted by President Eddie Fenech Adami, who, as Prime Minister, had led the country into the EU.

Dr Fenech Adami said recently there were feelings of disillusion and disgruntlement regarding membership because the material benefits were difficult to come by.

But there are actually more "material benefits" Malta can get from the EU with a bit more effort.

The European Commission has more than 100 centralised programmes running at any point in time but, unlike some of the other member states, Malta is only skimming the surface of this opportunity for funding.

Ms Giuliano and Ms Francica agree that Malta's participation in centralised programmes can be greatly improved. Only very few of the programmes - such as Socrates and Leonardo - have become household names. But even in these well-known programmes, participation by Malta was limited to a particular area.

In the case of Socrates, for example, Malta participated a lot in the Comenius project but not in Lingua 1 or Lingua 2.

Lingua 1 aims to promote lesser-known languages and Lingua 2 strives to create the tools to teach the language.

Things are likely to change and, Malta, through a local IT company, will be participating in a Lingua 1 programme starting in November.

The project - Learning On A Bus - will see the buses in Malta advertising certain keywords in various languages. For example the words bongu, sahha and grazzi will appear on the buses of the other participating countries. Maltese buses, on the other hand, will advertise these words in the various foreign languages.

The other participants in this programme, headed by Lithuania, are Italy, Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom and Romania.

In the case of Leonardo, Malta participated a lot in "mobility" but not in "pilot" projects.

A programme in which the Foundation for Women Entrepreneurs, which hosts Europe Direct (Malta), is a partner - SofE (School of Entrepreneurs) - has now been accepted as a pilot project and will kick off in Cyprus on October 23. The other partner countries are the Czech Republic, Italy, Norway, Poland, Romania and Ireland.

In this project, the partners have until 2007 to build a curriculum for a diploma on entrepreneurship. Those eventually taking up the diploma would have the possibility of following each module in a different participating country.

The examination centre will be set up in Malta.

Unfortunately, there were many programmes, dealing with every possible subject, which Malta was ignoring. Funding ran into millions of euros and non-participation meant missing out on this money. This, Ms Francica and Ms Giuliano said, was a shame because when the Maltese applied, they presented good quality applications compared to some of those presented by other countries. "But although our standard is good, the applications are too few. We can do it. If other countries can with their broken English, so can we.

"What we need is more self confidence."

They said that prospective applicants had to keep in mind that whenever an application was submitted, even if this was not accepted, an evaluation was given and the applicant was invited to reapply.

The programme SofE, for example, was only accepted the third time round.

Most of the "centralised" programmes, which unlike the "decentralised" are managed directly by the Commission, promote trans-national cooperation.

The average, in fact, call for a minimum of three partner countries, in others the minimum of partners is even bigger.

These programmes are open to the EU 25 and most are also available to applicant states Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey and Croatia.

The biggest applicants, Ms Giuliano and Ms Francica said, were the Greeks, the Italians, the Irish, the Spanish and now the Polish. "I can only admire them," Ms Giuliano said.

So what are these countries doing which Malta is not, I asked.

Ms Giuliano replied that when nationals of these countries went to Brussels they took what they would have learnt with them back home and shared it with others. And while they were in Brussels, they literally explored the possibilities for their country. The Maltese in Brussels, she said, should try to do a little bit more to help their country.

"This has to be a national effort."

Other countries also had units - representing both their private and public sectors - whose job was to "hunt" for money. The Spanish region of Valencia, for example, had a team of 30 people in Brussels who were fund hunters. This, Ms Giuliano said, was the way to go.

Other countries also kept watch for programmes and made use of consultants or relays such as Europe Direct. One could ask Europe Direct, for example, to put it on its e-mail database to receive partner searches. In fact, one who never applied for a programme should ideally start off partnering someone else to gain experience and make contacts.

The commission issued calls for programmes in the EU official journal http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/lex/JOIndex.do.

But one can seek the assistance of Europe Direct not just for EU programmes but also for any information related to the EU.

Europe Direct is actually the first link between Europeans and the European Commission and the intention of Ms Giuliano and Ms Francica is to target as many people as possible.

Since its resources are limited, it intends to do this through the assistance of local councils and other non-governmental organisations.

Representatives of Europe Direct will be writing in council publications and will be taking 20 people to Brussels twice a year to obtain first hand information and experience.

For its first years, it intends to focus and take proactive action in the south of the island because they feel this was the area were information was mostly needed.

They will also be targeting schoolchildren showing them the EU in a "fun" sort of way. Children would be told about the euro, for example, by means of a puppet show and euro chocolates.

But apart from proactive action, Ms Giuliano and Ms Francica said anyone could pop in at the office in Kappillan Mifsud Street, Hamrun and ask their questions over a cup of coffee. The aim of Europe Direct is to speak to people in a non-technical way making them feel confident.

In fact, since the office opened officially on September 7, more than 80 visitors called. The office also received five to 10 e-mails a day from people asking for information.

And what do the people ask about?

Most were university students who asked for publications, graduates enquired about temporary jobs in the Commission, some people went to complain, including on totally local issues which had nothing to do with the EU. Other requests were about how to navigate the EU's website, which the Commission was trying to make more user-friendly. The website was currently very difficult to navigate because of an information overload.

Other people asked for advice, of a financial nature. But Europe Direct did not give advice, it only gave information. The only advice it gave was about acquiring information.

Besides the requests for information from the people, Europe Direct also received many e-mails with "partner requests" for programme participation from other offices all over Europe.

Europe Direct Malta circulated such requests to non-governmental organisations and other entities, including councils.

Likewise, companies or organisations in Malta wanting to take part in programmes but needing partners could ask Europe Direct to send partner requests to the other European offices.

Asked what was the similarity between Europe Direct and the Malta EU Information Centre, Ms Francica said that while MIC was a government entity, Europe Direct was an independent body answerable to the Commission. The aims of the two, however, were very similar.

http://www.europedirectmalta.com