Parliament still without funds for Brussels office

The government has yet to allocate funds for Parliament to have a Permanent Representative in Brussels.

An official request for the funds was made ahead of the 2010 Budget by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Louis Galea. But while the request seems to have fallen on deaf ears, €200,000 were allocated to the political parties for "the development of their relations with the EU and the Mediterranean region".

These funds, shared by the Nationalist and Labour parties according to their representation in Parliament, started being allocated during the years preceding Malta's accession to the EU to be used for their preparations for accession. Following membership, the allocation of the direct funds continued.

Malta is one of only two EU member states that still have not appointed parliamentary permanent representatives to the EU capital. The other is Spain.

During a conference of EU Speakers in Stockholm last week, Dr Galea admitted that the Lisbon Treaty would pose greater challenges to the Maltese Parliament, which badly needed to upgrade its tools to be able to respond to them.

The allocation of funds for a Permanent Representative in Brussels was one of his priorities in 2010, he said.

Asked to comment on the matter, Dr Galea twice avoided the question and instead sent The Times a copy of a reply he had given on the same subject to a parliamentary question tabled by Labour MP Leo Brincat before the Budget. In his reply, Dr Galea listed the number of times the issue had been raised during different parliamentary fora since 2005.

Although he reiterated his agreement that Parliament should have its representative in Brussels, he said the necessary funds had still not been made available.

Lack of coordination between the Maltese Parliament and the European Parliament was raised a number of times since Malta joined the EU. On many occasions, Maltese MPs failed to turn up for joint parliamentary meetings organised by the EP in Brussels and a report issued by the European Commission a few months ago showed that, over the past three years, Malta's House of Representatives had not filed a single remark on hundreds of proposals made by the EU executive.

Reacting to this report, Dr Galea had complained that his institution, supposedly the most important in a democracy, did not yet have the necessary set-up to react to what comes out of the European Commission in Brussels.

On the other hand, he said the government had its own well-oiled mechanism, including a Permanent Representative with about 60 officials based in Dar Malta, in Brussels, to assist him.

During his speech in Stockholm last week, Dr Galea said Malta's Parliament had two main choices to make. It "can either be given a genuine push so that internal reforms are made and will be able take the opportunity and have a more effective representation both on a local and European level or else will become confused and discouraged".