Denis Mifsud’s and Joseph Muscat’s concerns (May 20) about the sale of Maltese passports are justified. In an article entitled ‘Shady island’, The Economist refers to our present political scene and concludes that “the island could be used by dubious interests as a private back door into the EU” (May 13).

One sector of local political opinion claims the EU institutions and foreign media are being used to damage Malta’s reputation and, potentially, our economy.

Apart from the fact that ‘Panamagate’ was exposed outside Malta, claims that foreigners have been used to put Malta in a bad light have an anti-free speech ring about them. They probably emanate from a sector that, in the 1970s and 1980s, saw Europe as the ‘enemy’.

This sector might have preferred us not to join the EU but to become some sort of appendage of the Middle East, a motley collection of dictatorships where freedom of speech is of no priority whatsoever.

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