Labour is proved right
So, after all, the Labour Party (PL) is proved right and the Prime Minister wrong. The Nationalist Party's jubilation when the Immigration Pact was signed was deafening. Lawrence Gonzi came back to Malta from Brussels trumpeting a huge success when the...
So, after all, the Labour Party (PL) is proved right and the Prime Minister wrong. The Nationalist Party's jubilation when the Immigration Pact was signed was deafening. Lawrence Gonzi came back to Malta from Brussels trumpeting a huge success when the pact was introduced. It was almost embarrassing to see him happy as a cat lapping up warm milk.
But the PL saw the pact immediately for what it was and pointed out that the most important provision in the pact, the burden sharing, was only voluntary. Under the pact, EU states were not obliged to share Malta's burden, to ease our plight. They could do so only if they wanted to, not because they were bound to.
The PL was depicted as anti-EU for having faulted the Immigration Pact. We were told the PL was never satisfied with anything coming from Brussels. But actually the truth is not that the PL is never satisfied but that the PN accepts all the crumbs Brussels hands out to Malta and comes here praising the EU.
Now we have our Home Affairs Minister and his Italian counterpart "piling pressure", as The Times put it (April 25), on the European Commission to make the burden sharing compulsory. This development shows not only that the Immigration Pact was hardly worth the paper it was written on, and that the PL knew immediately that Malta had been let down, but that Dr Gonzi cannot negotiate anything substantial for our country.
Does anyone still doubt how right the PL is to promise, where necessary, a veto on EU deliberations? Our Home Affairs Minister is now trying to put right the weak spots in what Dr Gonzi so meekly accepted. Will the PN government resort to the veto if we do not get compulsory burden sharing from the EU?
Mind you, I think burden-sharing will be made compulsory in time, hopefully before summer. Not because the PN is wielding any stick but because Italy wants it badly too. Dr Gonzi should have got Italy on his side when the Immigration Pact was being debated. But he was satisfied with voluntary burden sharing. And look what it got us! I wonder: Does Dr Gonzi see beyond his nose?