Maths is not the Labour forte

So EU funding for the period 2007 through to 2013 exceeds €1.15 billion and may increase further. And if you add the funding obtained during the first three years of membership, you are looking at a figure which tops the €1.5 billion. That is a billion, not a million.

This makes Labour's prediction of a paltry "Lm1.5 million in EU funding" back in 2003 quite a remarkable disaster insofar as mathematics go. Let alone political nous.

One would have thought that Labour would have learnt its lesson by now and that it would not go down this prickly road again by claiming, as it did, that Malta is, in fact, a net contributor to the EU rather than a net beneficiary. In other words, it claimed that Malta is paying more money to the EU than it gets.

Labour leader Joseph Muscat went further and claimed that, in 2007 and 2008, Malta paid €12.6 million more than it received. Of course, Labour was wrong. Again.

It turns out that Malta was, is and will remain a net beneficiary through to 2015 at the earliest. And that Dr Muscat misfired by - wait for it - a hefty €38 million.

And you thought that, faced with hard numbers and facts, Labour would relent and rectify its mistake. Or apologise. Think again. Labour dug in its heels and insisted that it was right even in the face of an official statement to the contrary from the European Commission and another from its Vice-President, Gunther Verheugen, during his visit here just last week.

There is something in Labour's state of denial that is not quite right.

First of all, persisting in error is not correct, to put it mildly. Labour seems to think that if it repeats this mantra on EU funding long enough people will soon start believing it. But this should not be allowed to happen.

Secondly, this EU funding business proves that, five years into EU membership, Labour is still not up to scratch on its knowledge of EU matters. As Richard Cachia Caruana aptly put it in this paper (March 13), Labour has a "frightening lack of knowledge about EU funding".

Unfortunately, this "frightening lack of knowledge" about EU matters goes far beyond funding, and one would have expected a party that aspires to govern the country to be better prepared on a subject that is now part of our daily political life. That Labour is not well prepared on EU matters is a serious shortcoming, which should be of concern to all of us because, ultimately, we will all end up paying for its misguided statements, false predictions and ill-conceived policies.

Think about the switch from VAT to CET and you will get the gist.

Thirdly, these statements on Malta's net beneficiary status are not just wrong because they are unfounded but also because they continue to transmit a droning negative message about EU membership that Labour was supposed to have shaken off by now. The fact that the Labour leader and his predecessor still revel in denigrating our country's choice on EU membership gives the lie to Labour's supposed conversion on Europe.

One day Dr Muscat tells us what a convinced European he is, the next day he tells (a different audience) how the EU is such a bad deal.

There's not much consistency there, is there?

Fourthly, the endless bickering over EU funding misses the point on EU membership by a mile. EU membership is much more than EU funding. In fact, on a scale of priorities for reasons for joining, I would put funding far below the opportunities that come in terms of access to the single market, investment, jobs in Malta and abroad as well as new civil rights and far higher standards of social, consumer and environmental protection, to mention but a few.

This leaves just one point that Labour should have stuck to instead of embarking on yet another embarrassing crusade.

This is that all funding that is made available to our country should be used in an effective and efficient manner. And no stone should be left unturned to exploit all that is available. True, making full use of EU funding is not a piece of cake, given the labyrinth of rules and red tape that is involved. And the onus is squarely on the government to make sure that no funds are lost.

So far, Malta's record seems to be positive as confirmed by the European Commission earlier this year when it ranked us first among the new EU countries for our capacity to absorb EU funding. That augurs well.

But nothing can be left to chance and, on this issue, the government simply cannot afford to fail. It should redouble its efforts to make sure that it succeeds.

Ask Your MEP on www.simonbusuttil.eu. Sign up the petition on www.stopthedust.org.

Dr Busuttil is a Nationalist member of the European Parliament.