Unrealistic picture of the Union

I quite enjoyed the article by Kenneth Wain (June 24) lambasting The Times editorial of June 21 about the recent Irish "No" to the Lisbon Treaty for EU reform. Enjoyed it not so much for content (I agree with some of the points, and disagree with others) but for the fact that towards the article's end there is, once again in our media, a reflection of the totally unrealistic approach which many people in this country have, over time, evolved regarding the realities of Maltese public stances vis-a-vis the EU.

Prof. Wain, and others before him, keep speaking and writing solely in terms of ours being a population (and now it seems also having a media fitting the description) made up solely of "Europhiles" and "Eurosceptics".

The realities of what I like to describe as "the market" of Maltese public opinion about the EU are much more complicated than that. I humbly submit that it is more precise to describe it as one made up of four distinct components or categories, viz:

(a) Malta has its own "Eurodrugged", i.e. those who see everything coming out of the EU as perfect, positive, good and future-looking, realistic, the solution to all our problems. And the EU's institutions being such as nothing wrong could possibly ever come out off them.

I will prudently refrain myself from saying who are the more notorious organisations and/or individuals who comfortably travel on this bandwagon.

(b) The country, thankfully, also has its "Europragmatists", i.e. those who know where the EU comes from - even before 1957 - and what it is trying to do, that if it were not there bisognerebbe inventarla (as the old Agnelli used to enjoy saying). But these are also people who, all along the way, see how the concept of shared sovereignty, the impotence lying in the present monetary vs fiscal policy dichotomies, continuing to respect the citizen out there, these and others are all matters of great importance even on a nationalistic basis, and all areas where so far the EU seems to be falling short in.

(c) The "Eurosceptics". The British model says it all. "No" to the Euro (the EU's greatest achievement in its history so far), "No" to Schengen, no to this, and no to that, but at the same time, "We now wouldn't want to be outside a block that is trying its damnest to keep up with Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Russia, Mercosur, China, India, and what have you". And obviously they should be having conscience pangs with questions like "How long can this game go on?"

And finally,

(d) The "Anti-Europeans", vis-à-vis those who see absolutely nothing good coming out, or ever has come out of the EU. For these, "Europe" is only the Germans and the Italians who bombed us, the EU is "them who cowardly do not want to share in burden-sharing of our illegal immigrants problems", and who expect us to do everything that "Brussels" says without however totally knowing our realities. This pitiable lot factually exists too in our midst, and I would hazard it is most present in the over-60s age group coming from certain parts of the country.

That, I would submit, is the more variegated reality of how the national Maltese public opinion market is at present split up on the EU. And so it should follow that it is wrong to not only attack so much a Times editorial which expresses the point of a still existing democratic deficit reality in both individual EU member-states and the Union itself, but also to do so in terms of an unrealistic picture of only "Europhiles" and "Eursosceptics".

The sooner all concerned, in both Brussels as well as here in Malta, accept that the post-accession honeymoon period is now a thing of long gone past, the better for all of us.