So the negotiations on Malta's membership of the European Union have now been concluded and the whole package is known. We await the day of the referendum to decide collectively, through an individual vote, whether to accept the package or not.

Things cannot be more simple, even if the decision that we have to take is a very crucial one for the country, for us and for Maltese future generations. The slogan L-Ghazla ghal Uliedna is a very apt one, irrespective of whatever or not one thinks about EU membership.

The impact of our decision on referendum day will be felt by today's adults but will be felt to a greater extent by today's children and those that shall come after them.

Various analogies have been made to depict the current situation. It has been stated that we should leave all doors open to us in order to have as much flexibility as possible in our decision-making as a country. In this regard non-membership has been described as the best option.

The retort soon came back saying that non-membership would be tantamount to closing all doors shut with little or no possibility of opening them again. I believe that this is correct.

Whereas membership of the EU would open a whole new world with new horizons for us, non-membership would mean clutching at what we have today, but knowing full well that with time we would have to let it go. This is why the status quo is no option at all.

The EU Commissioner Chris Patten has been quoted as saying that non-membership would leave fewer options and less flexibility for the country while also diminishing a country's sovereignty as it would be absent from the key decision-making that would be happening in Europe. EU membership would place it at the heart of the decision-making process.

This brings us to the analogy of the ship arriving in port and the decision has to be whether to disembark at the EU port to make it our home port (hence the title of this week's contribution) or to take the ship out of harbour again to try and navigate a different route which no one is sure whether it really exists, or, if it does, where it would lead us to.

The risk is that we would then have to scuttle the ship out of harbour, miles away from the EU home port with no guarantee of help from anyone, hence the term, "abandon ship".

Thus it is decision-making time on the basis of what has been negotiated. The item that has hit the headline in recent days (probably because it has marked the close of the negotiations) has been the financial package that we have been offered.

This amounts to Lm80 million over three years with an additional Lm30 million in the coming year under the Italian protocol that are being given to us in preparation for membership. So these latter funds are strictly tied to membership of the EU. The criticism that has been levelled at this package is that it is too little for what some may have been led to expect.

The truth is that we got a financial package that per person amounts to something like Lm275 over four years. This is higher than what other applicant countries have managed to achieve.

Our access to pre-accession funds have also been hampered by the freezing of our membership application in late 1996.

Moreover, the state of our economy is good in spite of the international economic slowdown and it is because we have managed to develop a stable economy with consistently low unemployment over the last 15 years thanks to job creation in the productive sectors of the economy and with a sustainable level of inflation, that we have not been offered a better package.

So the financial package is to be considered appropriate in the present circumstances and is based on what we need and not on some Christmas Day wish list that children draw up.

In effect, this has been the underlying premise of all our negotiations with the EU. We have sought to obtain concessions that take account of our specific circumstances as a small island state that is densely populated, with no home market, with no natural resources and that relies heavily on the exports of goods and services for its economic growth.

In this regard one could mention the special arrangement that has been obtained regarding the free movement of persons. This concession addresses very clearly the concern of some that we may be inundated with foreign workers coming from the poorer regions of Europe.

The result of the negotiations is that we shall have the right to stop any influx of foreign workers if we consider it important for us to do so to safeguard jobs for the Maltese in Malta. On the other hand, there is nothing to stop those, whoever wishes to do so, to go abroad and work in another EU member state.

One can also mention the seven-year exemption from VAT on food and medicines. The Maltese government negotiated this exemption on the basis that these items take up a higher percentage of the income of those persons that are less well off than of those persons that are more well off.

So it is seen to be an exemption based on social justice. After these seven years, the situation would be reviewed and being members of the EU would give us a great deal of say in such a review.

Then there is the part of the package that allows us to continue giving incentives to manufacturing industry under the Business Promotion Act, again with a review in 2008. There is the concession that we have obtained on the purchase of property that would serve as a strong limitation on foreigners coming to live here. There are the concessions that have been obtained with regard to fishing and agriculture.

Thanks to the conservation zone negotiated by the Maltese government our Maltese fishermen will continue to fish in the waters where they have always fished with no fear of competition from fishermen of other countries. With regard to agriculture, our Maltese farmers would be able to benefit from assistance that would allow them to safeguard their livelihood.

We can add other aspects that have been negotiated. The thread that unifies all these aspects is that the new opportunities that would be created through EU membership would signify work for the Maltese in this country.

There shall also be the costs to be borne, however, when one seeks to balance things out, one finds that the costs of staying out of the European Union are far greater than the costs of joining the EU.

There are also benefits (such as those relating to the guaranteed free access to the EU market for all products manufactured in Malta) that government did not need to negotiate in order to achieve them because they are given to members automatically.

It is within this context that, when examining the outcome of the EU membership negotiations, one notes that the Maltese government has made a good deal, with the benefits by far outweighing the costs. It is up to the electorate to decide whether it wants to make the EU as Malta's home port.