Last week in Parliament, the Prime Minister delivered a statement on the European Council summit meeting that he attended last month. The summit was meeting as the details on the Cypriot bailout were being hammered out.

The Finance Minister kept his mouth shut and did not utter a word of protest against the Cypriot bailout

In Parliament last week, I rose to ask the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister about Malta’s position on the Cypriot bailout.

The Cypriot bailout shocked many when it envisaged, for the first time, that a levy should be imposed on small depositors with bank savings of under €100,000 as part of Cyprus’ share of the bailout.

Although this agreement was later rejected by the Cypriot Parliament and had to be changed, it had been initially approved by the eurogroup ministers in Brussels. That includes our own Finance Minister.

This was the first time that bailout conditions included this kind of condition. In the case of Greece, Portugal and Ireland, the conditions did not touch the banking and financial services systems.

Levying a tax on bank savings is unprecedented and, unsurprisingly, this decision sent shockwaves not just in the Cypriot banking and financial services system but also in the entire European system. The underlying trust between a bank depositor and the bank had been shaken.

Now, one should think that since we have vested interests in financial services and trust in the banking system, the Government’s position on this matter in Brussels would have been clear and unequivocal.

One should think that the Government would speak out against imposing these kind of bailout conditions against whichever country, let alone a country such as Cyprus which, like us, depends heavily on its financial services sector.

One should think that the Government would, on a matter of such vital national interest, raise its hand and make its voice heard.

This is why I rose in Parliament last week to ask the Government what, exactly, was its position on this matter.

I asked whether the Government had agreed with the Cypriot bailout conditions – yes or no.

I asked whether the Government agreed that depositors in Cyprus with less than €100,000 in bank savings should be penalised with such a levy.

I asked whether the Government agreed that bank depositors should be forced to lose part of their savings to pay for the Cypriot bailout.

And, in view of the impact that this decision had on the stability of the financial system, I asked what the Government is doing to ensure that trust in the financial system is not jeopardised. After all, the Government of Luxembourg is going to great lengths to quell any uncertainty that may have been caused by this decision in Brussels.

The answers I got were incredibly short on substance.

On the one hand, the Prime Minister railed that I was being alarmist for asking the questions. And he proceeded to avoid answering altogether. It seems that, for the Prime Minister, asking questions about his Government’s actions is tantamount to being alarmist and sowing fear and uncertainty.

On his part, the Finance Minister rose to say that there was no objection whatsoever from any country to the bailout conditions and that it was perfectly normal for bailout agreements to be approved by consensus.

Really?

So there we have it. The Finance Minister kept his mouth shut and did not utter a single word of protest against the Cypriot bailout. Still less did he raise a red flag that this unprecedented levy on bank savings was not to Malta’s liking. In other words, he approved it without opening his mouth.

I disagree with his inaction.

I believe that Malta should have entered serious reservations on the matter because a precedent was being set. So much so that no sooner had the meeting of the eurogroup ended, that the head of the eurogroup, Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, publicly stated that this deal represented a new template on which future bailouts will be modelled. His announcement caused a furore and he later retracted it.

But if that were not enough, Edward Scicluna made another faux pas in Parliament last week. He told us that no one had objected to the Cypriot bailout.

Well, it turns out that there was at least one major country, France, that objected.

In an article entitled The Cyprus Bailout Blame Game Begins, the Financial Times reported on March 19 that the French Finance Minister, Pierre Moscovici, had wanted smaller depositors to be exempted “from the beginning”.

The paper reports that, at a pre-meeting of the ‘euro working group’, the French representative, Ramon Fernandez, had supported keeping deposits below €100,000 out of the equation.

And referring to the other delegations, it added that “the rest did not care”.

Perhaps Scicluna could explain why his delegation “did not care” and why France was left on its own objecting to the stupid idea of imposing a levy on small bank depositors.

Simon Busuttil is Nationalist Party deputy leader.