Malta’s EU presidency may come at a turning point for the European Union. The UK plebiscite could be the watershed that might, for better or for worse, rattle the institution.
If the conservatives in the UK win the next election in 2015, the Prime Minister has pledged a referendum on EU membership by 2017. Most recent polls show that an average of five to 10 per cent majority favour a British exit from the EU. Three out of four British firms are in favour of the referendum.
It was also made clear that before such a referendum, the UK would renegotiate its terms of membership. So whichever way the referendum goes, the EU might be faced with some challenges that were never anticipated.
As citizens of the EU, we have always been told that once a member, it is not easy to leave, and once the conditions of membership are agreed upon, it is not possible to change them. Now in one single swoop, both these stringent conditions are being thrown out of the window.
The Italian Prime Minister has supported the British initiative for a referendum on EU membership and the German Chancellor is ready to accept a fair compromise, although both hope the UK will not leave the EU.
The European Union’s credibility has often been questioned by its citizens. This was clear from some of the results of the referendums on the Lisbon Treaty. If it had been left for the citizens to decide, the treaty would probably have been scrapped. Only the manoeuvring by certain governments saved the treaty. This was done in most cases by preventing the citizens, for one reason or another, from having a say in the matter.
Apparently, one area of the British renegotiations is expected to address this particular issue of citizens’ participation in the work of the EU. The idea is to make it a law to prevent any transfer of power to the EU without a referendum.
This is in line with one of Malta’s priorities for its EU presidency, which falls right in the eye of the storm of the British initiative, whichever way the referendum would go.
Malta could lose part of its troika, since the UK is scheduled for the EU presidency following it in the latter part of 2017, or it could benefit from the UK’s reinvigorated EU participation if it receives the mandate to remain in the EU.
One way for Malta to exploit fully the British renegotiated membership in the EU is to continue pushing for its own stated priorities even after its presidency is over, particularly in the area of putting the citizens of Europe more centrally in EU decision-making. This would be in the spirit of the Lisbon Treaty itself, particularly its ‘citizen’s initiative’.
The European Union’s credibility has often been questioned by its citizens
This initiative enables one million EU citizens to call directly on the European Commission to propose a legal act, putting citizens on the same footing as the European Parliament and the Council.
Malta needs to consider some concrete measures to make the European institutions have the backing of its citizens. But citizens, as we have seen again and again, will not back anything that is not presented to them clearly and convincingly.
One way of doing this is for Malta to help institute a system of evaluation of the work of the EU aimed at showing the benefits for the man in the street. This type of impact evaluation is sorely lacking in the EU and its institutions. At present it appears that the evaluation process in the EU is mainly for the benefit of the European Parliament to facilitate discussion and approval of the budget.
The number of documents on evaluation that I could access and study seem to concentrate on process evaluation, and very little, if anything at all, is available to show the impact EU activities have on the individual citizen.
The European Commission carries impact evaluation before a proposed activity is adopted. This is hardly impact evaluation. I know from my many years involved with evaluation of United Nations activities that it is easy to evaluate the inputs and the outputs but much harder to evaluate the impact, defined as whether an activity is making someone’s life better.
We know that the European Parliament keeps an eye on the work of the EU and its institutions. But this is not enough.
It is therefore proposed that Malta, in preparing for its presidency, studies the available evaluation techniques in the Commission and fine-tunes some of these to highlight the impact the EU work has on the citizen.
Only concrete examples will convince the man in the street that his life is being improved by some of the EU work. Only then will the EU be seen as helping the citizen and only then will the citizen back the EU institutions.
Michael Bartolo is a former Ambassador of Malta to the UN in Geneva.