The largest political group in the European Parliament, the EPP-ED Group, will be meeting in Malta for three days of policy study between today and Friday.
The EPP-ED Group brings together European Christian Democrat parties (EPP) with the European Democrats (ED) principally composed of the British and Czech conservative parties.
The debate will focus on three main themes that are of direct interest to Malta: the Euro-Med region, including the Middle East peace process, the EU maritime policy and the EU immigration policy.
On behalf of my party, the Nationalist Party (PN), and on behalf of my colleague, David Casa, I would like to extend a warm welcome to all our colleagues and wish them a pleasant and fruitful stay in Malta and Gozo.
In particular, I would like to welcome our group chairman, Joseph Daul, on his first visit to Malta since taking the lead of the EPP-ED Group in January this year.
The Malta meeting will feature an impressive line up of some 150 members of the European Parliament and four EU Commissioners - Franco Frattini, Jacques Barrot, Vivienne Reding and Joe Borg. They will also be joined by the Foreign Minister of Jordan, Abdelelah Al-Khatib, and Slovenian Home Affairs Minister Dragutin Mate.
A further eight parliamentarians from non-EU Mediterranean partner countries will attend as observers and I hope that their presence will further strengthen the group's growing cooperation with their respective political parties and their countries.
The Maltese ministers who will address the gathering will be led by Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi and will include Minister Tonio Borg (on immigration), Minister Censu Galea (on maritime policy) and Minister Michael Frendo (on Euro-Med).
But a special welcome goes to Guido de Marco, President Emeritus of Malta, who will address the first session this morning and who will be awarded the prestigious Robert Schuman medal tonight for his unstinting contribution to Euro-Mediterranean and European integration.
This week's occasion will give our EPP-ED colleagues a good opportunity to learn more about Malta and the Maltese people.
They will find that the smallest EU member state is a proud nation with a millennial history determined to make the best of its membership of the European Union as well as its location at the heart of the Mediterranean.
By European standards, Maltese is still catching up both economically and socially. But it has already come a long way.
Come January 1, Malta will proudly adopt the European single currency, the euro. EU membership has stimulated us to embark upon reform and to undertake change, even if painful, that was, in any case, inevitable. But it has also provided us with a huge market, turning our domestic market of a mere half a million consumers into a virtually unlimited market of half a billion. In turn, our European market has made us a magnet for investment and helped us create new and better jobs.
It has been far from easy and we have not been immune from hard-hitting shocks, often exogenous, such as the sting of unprecedented international fuel prices and the trauma of redundancies as companies relocate to adjust to the realities of globalisation. In a small, open economy with an immediate laboratory effect, the dismissal of 700 workers - as Malta experienced just a few days ago - represents an immediate staggering 10 per cent increase in unemployment. Malta becomes only the third country, after France and Finland, to call upon the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund for support. But our challenges do not lead us to recoil into our shell. They make us more resilient. If there is one lesson that we have learnt it is that change is not a one-off exercise; it is an ongoing process. The moment you stop changing, reforming, competing, innovating - that's when you lose as others dart ahead.
Nor is it to say that there are no casualties. That is why a net of social solidarity needs to be cast to provide comfort for those who risk being left behind.
Solidarity is hardly new to the EU.
Over the past decades, European solidarity has translated into financial instruments that helped thousands of workers integrate into the labour market, built transport infrastructures to help economies move ahead and successfully nurtured otherwise fragile sectors.
And as new challenges emerge, European solidarity must keep up the pace.
One of the recent challenges facing Mediterranean member states, such as Malta, is the tidal wave of immigrants making the perilous sea crossing to the continent. As hundreds lose their lives at sea and as Southern member states struggle with the influx, European solidarity has so far failed to live up to its name.
True, national egoisms, thinly masked under the guise of national sovereignty, have not helped and they are cheating Europe from the tools to act effectively. And Northern European countries may, understandably, if unjustifiably, feel that what happens in the Mediterranean is not really their problem.
But it is. Suffice it to say that it is an open secret that only one in every four illegal immigrants who land in Italy actually stays there. The rest move up north.
So a coherent and effective European immigration policy, which is underpinned by solidarity, a meaningful solidarity, towards countries of origin as well as towards countries facing a high influx, is urgently required.
Europeans in Malta, Cyprus, Greece, Sicily, the Canary Islands and elsewhere are expecting an answer from us.
The EPP-ED group should take the leadership in providing it.
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