Official details were not released – it is expected that they are not – on the state of play during the late negotiations on the EU Budget for 2014-20. Leaks and rumours provide grist for preying journalists and analysts. Some are close to the mark, others far from it. There is no unofficial way of knowing, therefore, whether the first offer to Malta was truly for under €700 million, far below expectations and requirements. What became fact was the final agreement, still subject to European Parliament approval, that the final offer to Malta is just over €1.1 billion.

Civil servants worth their salt ignore partisanship and stick to delivering their best advice and efforts

The gap is so large as to suggest the figure first mooted could not have been close to the reality prevailing on the negotiating table. Be that as it may, the final official figure is a good one, no doubt the result of well-presented arguments by the Prime Minister and his team.

The figure does not represent, as so many believe, the net transfer that can be made to Malta and Gozo out of EU funds, reduced for the first time largely under pressure from the UK Prime Minister. It has to be netted by the transfer of funds that Malta has to make to the EU annually over the period. The projections, however, are that Malta will remain a substantial net beneficiary, irrespective of the transfers it has to make, and the changing averages within the expanded union, where Malta is no longer one of the lowest income countries.

The news of the allocation to Malta, as to any other country, was political, in that it was negotiated at the highest political level of the EU structure. It is not, though, political in a truly national sense. Between now and the start of next year, and beyond too, various general elections will take place. They are bound to bring changes in government coalitions which represent the bulk of the countries in the EU, and potentially in Malta too, though the coalition effect does not and will not affect Malta.

Irrespective of the outcome of such general elections, the allocations agreed upon in Brussels last week will stand. Hence the justification for saying that the allocations are not essentially political. Another reason is that much of the representative and early negotiating work is done by the commissioners and the permanent staff at the EU, which should not be expected to change automatically as soon as there is a change of government in any country.

Actually, few countries introduce absolute politics into this feature of the European arrangement. The UK Prime Minister went with a political agenda for the concluding discussions because of the political stance within his divided party and coalition, not because of political confrontation with the official Labour opposition.

This way of seeing the deal and its final outcome seems, like so much else, beyond the comprehension of the Maltese political structure. The Maltese Prime Minister, who represented the whole of Malta in the negotiations, and not merely his party fraction of it, had no sooner stepped off the plane that brought him back than he was politicking for all he is worth.

According to him, only a Nationalist government would be able to reap for Malta the benefits that should come from the EU’s net contribution to Malta between 2014 and 2020. That is absolute arrogance, plus unmitigated and dangerous nonsense.

Arrogance because the Prime Minister seems to think that only the Nationalist DNA can represent Malta’s government, and so we should have a Nationalist government forever and ever. The good man ought to be careful. The implied conviction behind the way he argues is not too dissimilar from political credos which allow scant room for the democratic process.

It is also unmitigated nonsense because Malta, like all democracies, does not simply have its partisan political class. It also has a civil service staffed by public officers who know that their obligations are towards the country as a whole, and not to any one partisan half of it. Yet the Prime Minister feels no compunction in sending a message to public servants that they should not work with a different government.

That is a dangerous way of doing politics. I hope that in a few weeks’ time it will not influence public officers in the way they carry out their duties, according to the policies of the new government, should there be a change of Administration.

What serious public officers should be working on, irrespective of the political scenario, is the best way to utilise and absorb the EU funds to be made available to Malta. Without any prompting from their political masters they should take it upon themselves to build various alternatives for them to present to their ministers. Ministers will, as likely as not, change in any event, even if the Government remains the same. That possibility also highlights the importance the duty of public officers is to be at the ready with technical material to serve whoever steps in to take political accountability.

The Prime Minister’s attitude is perilous, in that it might influence a few civil servants to think solely in partisan terms, rather from the national standpoint. In my personal experience, civil servants worth their salt ignore partisanship and stick to delivering their best advice and efforts. That’s how it should be.