Malta’s biggest winner in this year’s MEP elections, former Prime Minister Alfred Sant, said today that although he expected a PL victory, he did not expect such a massive one. He also expected the PL to lose one of its seats.

He said that at the end of the campaign many people decided that the Labour Party’s arguments to represent their interests, those of the country and those for the defence of Malta in Europe were convincing.

Watch the interview above.

The EP elections will be the focus of TimesTalk on TVM today at 6.55pm

Meanwhile, in a social event this morning, Dr Sant said that the next five years will be challenging for Europe because tough choices will have to be made – between “more Europe” to make the euro zone especially more effective technically or “less Europe” to protect the European social model which in the past few years has been downsized.

Malta has up to now stayed at the margin of these issues, but will clearly be effected by them. Indeed as the recent EP elections in Malta showed, concerns like those over immigration and job creation were growing here too.

Dr Sant said that the results of the EP elections in the EU’s member states had delivered a sharp lesson. This was that millions of voters and their families felt that they needed a Europe which responded better to their day to day expectations. Clearly on jobs, immigration and social rights European voters felt let down by the EU. Some showed this by not bothering to vote, others by voting for parties that in the recent past had been considered to be outside the pale. Yet it was these parties which with their rhetoric and their proposals were felt by Europeans to be responding to their concerns.