Joseph Muscat’s defiance of a European Parliament resolution criticising Malta’s citizenship scheme as well as the tone of his response to Opposition leader Simon Busuttil’s speech in Parliament on Monday are cause for concern.
Dr Muscat seems oblivious to the damage caused to Malta within EU circles by his government’s citizenship scheme. Speaking in Parliament on Monday he did not seem to fully comprehend the seriousness of the European Parliament’s resolution, passed by a massive majority, including most of the Socialists, a week earlier.
The Prime Minister’s rebuttal of Dr Busuttil’s arguments in the aftermath of the European Parliament vote bore the hallmarks of a eurosceptic.
Referring to the European Commission, Dr Muscat said he would not kneel before anyone, and the discussions to be held with the EU executive on the citizenship scheme would be carried out “on an equal footing”. He also accused the Opposition of being “lackeys” and remarked “this is the main thing that distinguishes us from you”.
Such a tone is regrettable. Dr Muscat needs to be reminded that Malta is part of the EU; using the European Commission as a punching bag is ill-advised. The EU executive represents the interests of Europe as a whole and should not be looked upon in an “us” against “them” manner.
The overall thrust of the Labour government’s European Union policy since it was elected to office last year has been worrying.
The threat, last July, by Dr Muscat to send a group of Somali immigrants arriving in Malta back to Libya sent the wrong signal to the EU, namely that we were not interested in the rule of law. Thankfully, the European Court of Human Rights issued an interim order prohibiting this push-back.
Furthermore, Dr Muscat’s suggestion (for which he later apologised) that European Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmström, who had criticised Malta’s stand, should send these immigrants to her home country, certainly didn’t help matters; neither did Dr Muscat’s threat to veto EU legislation unless Malta was given concrete help to tackle immigration. The later appointment by the Prime Minister of former European Commissioner John Dalli to oversee health reform also did not go down well with Brussels.
Considering the Labour Party’s past antagonism towards the European Union, this government has to be careful how it conducts itself within EU circles. Labour in Opposition was ferociously against Malta’s membership of the bloc and used nationalist and eurosceptic arguments in its campaigns.
After the 2003 election, which it lost heavily mainly because of its opposition to EU membership, Labour finally accepted that Malta was to join the EU and said it would respect this reality. It again lost the next election, in 2008, principally because the electorate did not trust Alfred Sant’s eurosceptic instincts.
This all changed after Dr Muscat replaced Dr Sant; the new leader was able to pull off a landslide victory in 2013 because voters believed he was genuine about Labour discarding its past antagonism towards the EU. The government should keep this in mind when formulating its EU policy.
Malta is the smallest member of the EU and needs as many friends and allies as possible; it cannot afford to be isolated.
The previous Nationalist administration led by Lawrence Gonzi had managed, through patient diplomacy, to make Malta a respected EU member state. Such a legacy should be built upon, not trampled upon and discarded.