A promising opportunity has arisen for a serious effort to be made to put the Malta Council for Economic and Social Development on a sound footing. It takes the shape of a set of recommendations made by a working group for the restructuring of the council.

The council, often at the centre of controversy over the years, does not have a good image. There is more than one reason for this. The government’s influence on its work and operations does not help.

But there are other factors that have held it back from becoming the effective national institution it was meant to be when it was set up. These range from the politically partisan approach at times taken by some of the members to lack of adequate financial resources.

Of the recommendations made, the key one is that the council ought to be autonomous. It is important that politics be taken out of the equation, at least to the extent that this is possible in a council where members come from so many different organisations.

If members make an effort to discuss matters of national interest in a non-partisan manner, the council would stand a better chance of fulfilling its role.

Organisations entitled to be represented on the council ought to appoint as members people who can be trusted to keep politics away from the forum all the time under whichever political party is in government.

Again, it may well be argued that this is practically impossible in an island that continuously feeds on politics.

Difficult it most certainly is but not impossible if there is willingness all round. If the members manage to do this, they would be helping to gradually transform the council into a truly professional organisation that could be of great help in the island’s social and economic development. Is not this an aim worth working for?

There would be no harm in inviting a minister, or ministers, for meetings on specific subjects under discussion but the government ought not to have any overriding power over any aspect of the council’s operations. The working group, chaired by William Portelli, is suggesting that council meetings should move away from the social dialogue ministry. This makes sense as it will emphasise its independence.

The working group would like to see the council being restructured on three different levels: a working group, where the members could float their ideas; the bureau level, where these ideas are studied by experts commissioned by the council; and a plenary level.

Whatever arrangements are agreed upon, the aim ought to be to turn the council into a really effective organisation.

The working group’s recommendations come only weeks after the Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry described the council, in a document setting out its economic vision for Malta, as a rudderless, irrelevant and inconsequential national institution. There can hardly be a more categorical assessment of the council’s ineffectiveness than this.

It is not only important for the council to reach conclusions in its work but that such conclusions are arrived at on the basis of informed positions taken after professional consideration.

This presupposes that the council is well funded because if it is not, no amount of restructure will ever make it truly effective. As the situation stands, the council is not adequately funded.

An efficient organisational structure on the lines being suggested by the working group may well be the beginning of a new life for the MCESD.