More Europe, please!

We are now four years into our EU membership and, yet, there are issues beyond dispute that seriously tax people's minds.

Most important is this. We joined the EU to improve ourselves, for our standards of living to rise, for our health and municipality services to improve, for our liberties to be guaranteed, for the flow of information to be objective and consistent, for there to be less discrimination, for our democracy to be guaranteed. Nobody voted for EU membership to pay more taxes or to be worse off. Nobody voted for health services to dip, for our roads to buckle and crumble each time it rains, for people to feel less secure in their homes and on the streets, for public broadcasting to act as the government's beautician while the wall of our social security system falls apart and for society to retreat in having to make do with less.

Joining the EU may not have been, at the start, about money. But four years on, the government has turned membership into just that. Four years into our EU membership the government still crows about the huge amounts of funding it successfully negotiated with the EU back in 2003, while it sweeps under the carpet many other important issues EU membership should have brought in its wake. Our full rights as EU citizens are something the government still denies us.

Let's for a minute play on the government's own turf; let's talk money.

When Malta joined the EU, the prospects were that Malta would remain a net beneficiary for at least until 2013. Sadly, for the past two years we have been a net contributor. Does this mean the EU does not have enough funds for us? Not really. The answer may lie in the way the EU processes funding destined for member states or it may lie in the fact that our government has grown complacent or is incompetent in dealing with what Brussels requires.

To spur those funds to start flowing into our national coffers there's much the government is obliged to do first. Most of all, it must commit with Brussels to projects that qualify for EU funding and projects that make sense to the Maltese.

The logical suspicion is that the government is repeatedly failing to do this. It cannot think up and plan for enough projects to absorb available EU funds. That begins to explain the obsession with wanting to spend a whopping €16 million on a hugely controversial road at Għadira or a few other million euro on the building of the breakwater bridge. Can the government honestly justify the money spent on such projects? Can it honestly convince its citizens that they will benefit more from building a bridge on the breakwater than by fixing the potholes in our roads and shortening the waiting list in our hospital?

This is shameful for it betrays more than casual unpreparedness. It provides Brussels with the sneaking suspicion the island does not have the absorptive capacity to utilise funds it earmarks for Malta.

What makes this the more shameful is that, while funds available from overseas lie fallow and unused, the Maltese are being made to suffer higher taxes and worse services, much the result of inefficient and wasteful use of taxpayers' money.

It is here that a team of dedicated and honest Labour MEPs will make the difference. What we need is more EU not less! This means that we must secure from the EU much more than the dismal results this tired Administration has and is netting. When this government brags and crows about funds and concessions it gets from the EU, it stops short of telling us at what cost, and why we end up, each time, paying more than we pocket.

I want to be part of the Labour Party MEP team to guarantee that EU funds will find their way into everyone's pockets - not remain on a list somewhere. I want EU membership to help ease people's financial, fiscal and social burdens.

I want to be able to turn the EU promise into a reality for taxpayers who can't get a decent health service, whose household budget is being eroded by higher taxes, for those who are being discriminated against, for those who feel disillusioned by EU membership, for those who thought membership was a great idea and it is, but, to date, for ruling politicians and their friends and not them! I want our health, safety and environment standards to be upgraded to those we witness when we visit other European countries.

I want each and everyone to feel the benefits of EU membership because each and every one of us shoulders the obligations.

My slogan for this MEP campaign, Count On Me, means just that.

And my word is my bond.

Ms Mizzi will be contesting the MEP elections on behalf of the Labour Party.