Hands off the EU!

The leadership of the MLP is moving straight towards a head-on collision with the European Union.

The declarations made by the EU's High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy, Javier Solana, spelled out clearly that the re-negotiation of the 2004 package is "not possible".

Equally clear is the determination on the part of the MLP leadership to make of the re-negotiation of key areas such as agriculture a political platform for the election campaign.

This worrying scenario for Yes voters is compounded by the official support which Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici's anti EU movement, CNI, is getting from the MLP.

CNI's No movement enjoys an entire weekly page in l-orizzont. The lead story of last week's page stated clearly "... CNI must work so that there be a majority which agrees that our country will not remain a member of the EU and will not be ruled as a colony but will be governed by the will of the majority of the Maltese and Gozitans as expressed democratically at the general elections".

CNI's position is nothing new. What Yes voters may not have realised is the continued support to CNI's anti-EU campaign through the exposure given in the daily openly pro-Labour newspaper, which, added to Labour's recent declarations, makes very worrying reading!

Of equal concern is MLP's antagonism towards the "hurried" introduction of the euro by the Nationalist government.

Charles Mangion, as acting leader of the Malta Labour Party, officially told his Euro socialist colleagues at a meeting in Malta that the "hurried" introduction of the euro will have a damaging effect on our economy.

Dr Mangion's provocation caused immediate antagonism with this European socialist colleagues. The president of the Euro socialists, Martin Schultz immediately and openly contradicted Labour's thinking on the euro. He said our economy is strong enough for the euro and the decision to introduce the euro was "the best thing that could have happened to Malta".

Labour is heading for confrontation even within the Euro socialist movement.

The country certainly does not need these winds of confrontation between Malta and the EU when the economy is looking forward to a period of consolidation without any re-inventing of the EU wheel.

Labour, therefore, intends to give our economy a double whammy of political uncertainty purely for electoral consumption. The combined effect of confrontation with the EU together with Labour's black vision on the euro is not what our economy needs.

Not only.

If the euro represents a serious burden on our economy, then how do they intend to finance such a burden? Worse still: How do they intend to finance the electoral bonanza they are promising the electorate?

To my mind the answer is clear. Alfred Sant, being a socialist, can only promise a bigger state intervention. Now Labour can only be credible if it tells the electorate that we will have, in the words of their historic leader Dom Mintoff, to tighten the belt through "austerity" measures. Otherwise, what is the fuss about?

When the electorate voted Yes, we wanted an economy to be competitive and integrated into the single market. We wanted a government that shows confidence in all the economic sectors and lets them operate freely. We wanted an economy looking much more at where the market is going than at Castille.

The declarations made by the MLP leadership and the open support to CNI are a very serious and rude awakening to those of us who thought that, once in the EU, we could stay comfortably at home and put away our political thinking hat.

For the third time in five years we Yes voters will have to wear our walking boots to the polling booth instead!