Greece's spectacular apocalypse needs to be debated and questions must be answered on what it all means to us.

What can we learn from Greece's mistakes and how can we avoid them? Why do we have to help Greece and how much will it cost?

These are legitimate questions that people are asking and we must help everyone understand what is going on and how it relates to Malta. More importantly, we must explain why Greece cannot be the example to follow and why the populist resistance to some of our own reforms may lead us precisely down that path.

I hope that the government realises that it must take the lead in this public debate because, ultimately, it is the one that must explain its reforms here at home and it is the one that has committed our money to support Greece, minimal as our share may be.

The financial details of Malta's share of the loans made available to Greece are already known. So I will limit myself to a few other points of reflection.

Firstly, the Maltese government was right last weekend to support the eurozone decisions to help Greece. It was right because solidarity is a two-way street and we must uphold it not just when we need it but also when others need our help. It was also right because, by helping Greece, we are actually helping the euro, which is our currency. We are therefore, indirectly, helping ourselves.

Secondly, there is no doubt that Greece is now paying the price of long years of poor governance, with one government after another failing to take the difficult (but right) decisions even when they were necessary. Evidently, they did so because they feared the political consequences, that is, they feared losing votes.

In Greece, it goes back to the unreliability of their public statistics that helped them join the euro in the first place and continued with years of missed opportunities in implementing structural reforms. As a result, the country lost its competitiveness because prices and wages spiralled up faster than productivity. Tax evasion became endemic and corruption in the public sector remained widespread.

So the chickens have now come home to roost. But if we recognise ourselves in some or more of the Greek symptoms, then we should overcome the resistance to taking the necessary corrective measures in good time.

Thirdly, we must therefore consider ways of avoiding a situation where we could end up in the Greek corner, left with no real choices.

Jacques Delpla, a highly respected economic advisor to the French Prime Minister, claims that some hugely painful decisions, such as reducing wages and prices in order to regain competitiveness, might be necessary. Latvia, a bold exception, is doing just that. But he admits that this comes at a huge social cost and would need a series of complementary measures.

In helping Greece come out of its predicament, Mr Delpla advocates a number of interesting measures that should be worth considering. One of them is to get EU countries to increase the EU Budget to the maximum allowable ceiling (of 1.27 per cent of EU GDP from the current one per cent) releasing substantial funding to support Greece and other countries as they reform, as long as their reforms are true and serious.

Another is to create a market for safe (blue) public debt, which would make safe borrowing cheaper and more secure for governments. Countries that exceed the established thresholds for (blue) public debt limits (60 per cent of GDP) would not be allowed to issue "Blue Debt".

Yet another proposal is to pursue a policy of flexi-security that supports job creation and reduces unemployment. The Danes had done it in the 1990s and got their workers back to work, reducing unemployment to about four per cent.

Finally, Mr Delpla espouses a constitutionally binding rule that ensures that countries do not exceed established limits of yearly public deficits. Germany agreed to this rule only last year and it would be an interesting model to follow.

Mr Delpla describes the Greek situation as a choice between sky diving without a parachute or taking a toboggan with airbags. Hardly the best of options but there you are: Greece must take the toboggan and thank its lucky stars that it comes with European airbags.

As to us, we are still in time to avoid getting into that situation in the first place. So let us not miss that chance by caving in to populist resistance to inevitable reforms. For, by resisting reforms today, painful as they may be, we risk making them unbearable tomorrow.

Readers who would like to ask questions to be answered in this column can send an e-mail, identifying themselves, to contact@simonbusuttil.eu or through www.simonbusuttil.eu.

Dr Busuttil is a Nationalist member of the European Parliament.