Defending your interests

Barely a year ago, during the European Parliament election campaign, the Labour Party posed as the knight in shining armour ready to defend your interests.

We had Joseph Muscat's breast-beating 20 points in Parliament and a comfort letter from Martin Shulz, head of the Socialist Group, that we were in their good hands on immigration.

In the event, the Labour Party secured three (soon to be four) seats in the European Parliament and anyone would have thought that they would now be handling all our immigration concerns in Parliament.

Right?

Wrong.

Not a single Labour MEP sits in the Civil Liberties Committee that deals with immigration. And to add insult to injury, it was recently revealed in The Sunday Times that Labour has left one of its MEPs without any parliamentary committee at all.

So I was left on my own in the Civil Liberties Committee. But as a minimum, I would have expected them to have sufficient hold within the Socialist Group to sway a vote where our interests were at stake.

Wrong again.

Last Thursday, Labour's bluff was confirmed when the European Socialists failed to support a resolution that I piloted through the Civil Liberties Committee to reject the so-called Frontex rules on maritime surveillance.

Contrary to what was reported in some media, the rules were not approved by the European Parliament as such but were simply confirmed when an attempt to reject them in Parliament was derailed by the Socialists.

The rules were originally proposed by the Commission and approved by Council last January. Their approval caused a furore in Malta and it was at this point that I enquired why these rules had been adopted without the consent of Parliament.

It transpired that the Commission had used a procedure of delegated legislation which requires the consent of Council but not of Parliament. I found it strange that rules of such contentious ramifications could be passed through the window without an opportunity for Parliament to change them.

So I asked for advice from the Legal Services of the European Parliament which duly confirmed that, in bypassing Parliament, the Commission had acted in excess of its powers.

It was on this basis that I piloted a resolution in the Civil Liberties Committee to recall these rules to Parliament in order to have them rejected. This resolution was adopted by a majority of 24 to 13 in committee with the support of my group along with the Liberals, the Conservatives and the Greens.

Last Thursday, that vote needed to be confirmed in plenary with an absolute majority of 369 members. When the vote was called, Socialist MEP Michael Cashman and EU Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom rose to appeal against rejection because, according to them, these rules were necessary to save lives.

Now of course, I agree that legal certainty should prevail in the high seas and that lives should be saved. Who doesn't? But the Commission must act in a proper manner, enabling Parliament to have its say and make the rules fairer. I rose to make this point last Thursday before the vote.

In the event, 336 MEPs voted with me to reject the rules - just 33 votes short of the required majority - with 253 approving them and 30 abstentions. The Socialist group (along with the Communist group) supported the rules and to boot, issued a press release boasting at having foiled my attempt to reject them.

So that's it. We needed Labour to deliver just 33 votes to achieve the required majority. But in the event, they did not even give us their three votes - one Labour MEP was absent.

When reality struck home, the Labour media went into overdrive to limit the damage. We saw this before last May when three Labour MEPs voted in three different ways on the Dublin Regulation.

This time round their claims were again wild and spurious.

They claimed that the onus was on me since I am in the Civil Liberties Committee (that's rich). They claimed that I failed to convince four EPP MEPs to vote with us (but the 336 votes that I mustered are greater than the entire EPP group put together). And in much the same fascist tactics that they deployed on Alex Perici Calascione last year, they distorted my reply in plenary to claim that I wanted to approve the Frontex rules.

But if you believe that, then you may as well believe that Joseph Muscat has kept his promise to implement a code of ethics in his newsroom.

This episode will go down in the annals as another case where Labour failed to match its rhetoric in Malta with its action in Brussels.

It shows that when push comes to shove, the Labour Party is incapable of defending your interests.

www.simonbusuttil.eu