The main news this week must be the referendum that the UK government is holding on the country’s membership of the European Union. If the British people vote for staying in the EU, some things will change but not so much. If they vote to exit the EU, then the impact will be that much more significant.

Therefore, the call to understand fully the implications of a British exit from the EU is very pertinent as there shall be an impact on the EU economy and even on the Maltese economy.

I believe that this topic requires a separate analysis. However, if we look at the wider picture, the negotiations of last week in the context of the European summit between the UK and the heads of government of the other member states lead us to another important consideration.

Europeans need to ask themselves whether the Union is indeed a union or just a pact between governments. Hence the title of this week’s contribution.

The part of the negotiations between the British government and the other EU member states that made the headlines in the media was about the rights of persons coming from member states and going to live in Great Britain. Do these persons have the same right of access to social benefits as UK nationals do?

This sort of claiming of welfare benefits can only be described as an abuse

The background to this is that thousands of persons (probably hundreds of thousands) living in Eastern European countries, members of the EU, went to live in the UK, claimed welfare benefits from the UK (because the current rules give the same right of access) and then remitted a chunk of these same benefits to relatives in their country.

These persons have acted within their rights. However, it is more than legitimate to ask whether this is the whole objective of the EU. The Union already has a system by which funds flow from richer member states to poorer member states. The ERDF and the ESF are examples of these.

However, these citizens are claiming a double whammy. They are claiming welfare benefits from the UK, while their governments continue to be net beneficiaries of EU funds.

This is why I am querying whether the EU has evolved into a pact or whether it is still a union.

In a union there are as many rights and responsibilities as there are in a pact. However, the concept of the union is such that things happen within a framework of cooperation. This sort of claiming of welfare benefits can only be described as an abuse.

The same principles apply when we speak of the rules related to the level of the fiscal deficit.

The rigid approach being advocated by some countries is such that they have rendered the EU nothing more than a pact and have killed off the spirit of the founding fathers of the EU, whose vision was one of a union. Ticking off boxes to record compliance has become more important than creating a European way of life.

Politicians wonder why European citizens feel so distant from European institutions. I believe the reason is that we have rendered the EU not so much a union of people as a pact between governments.

We saw this even in the migrant crisis. The financial resources allocated to address this issue by some member states were nothing more than a pittance. Their attitude was to let the countries, which represent the first port of call for the migrants, to resolve this issue on their own.

One of the results of the negotiations between the UK and the other member states has been the opt-out that the UK obtained to the clause in the EU treaty which speaks of an ever closer union.

It is indeed ironic to note that this opt-out may help to safeguard and strengthen the union because I fear that in the current climate, an ever closer union could well lead to a pact which would serve as a whip with which to hit individual countries on their head.