‘Sixth MEP’ asks PM to pile pressure on Greeks
Signing off his letter as the sixth Lisbon Maltese MEP, Labour candidate Joseph Cuschieri urged the Prime Minister to pressure Greece into ratifying the treaty that awards Malta an additional seat in the European Parliament. Mr Cuschieri yesterday hand...
Signing off his letter as the sixth Lisbon Maltese MEP, Labour candidate Joseph Cuschieri urged the Prime Minister to pressure Greece into ratifying the treaty that awards Malta an additional seat in the European Parliament.
Mr Cuschieri yesterday hand delivered a letter to the Office of the Prime Minister at Castille, another in a chain of letters in which he asked Lawrence Gonzi to raise the issue of the sixth seat with his Greek counterpart in the various meetings he is expected to have during tomorrow’s extraordinary EU summit on the debt crisis.
Malta was awarded a sixth seat by virtue of the Lisbon Treaty but this will only take effect when the treaty is ratified by all member states. The UK, Romania, Belgium and Greece have not yet ratified the treaty although Mr Cuschieri pointed out that the process was at an advanced stage except for Greece.
Mr Cuschieri placed sixth in the 2009 EU parliament election, giving him the chance to take up the additional seat when this became available.
“I am formally asking you in my name and in the name of the 19,672 people who voted for me... as Prime Minister of Malta and in the national interest so that, on the first occasion, during this week, you will raise this issue... with Greek Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou,” Mr Cuschieri wrote.
The Labour MEP-in-waiting, who had resigned his parliamentary seat in 2008 to allow for the co-option of Labour leader Joseph Muscat, said he also wrote to Mr Papandreou.
Mr Cuschieri recently insisted on linking Malta’s approval of the second bailout package for Greece with the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty and the sixth seat.
He had urged the government to veto the bailout package unless Greece approved the necessary protocol that allowed for an increase in the number of European Parliament seats. In his latest letter, Mr Cuschieri called on Dr Gonzi to ask the Maltese Permanent Representative in Brussels, Richard Cachia Caruana, to bring up the matter in the first meeting about European summits.