During the second week of November, various foreign journalists requested interviews with FOI president Anton Borg. Among them were Michael Knipe, Editor, Foreign Focus Reports of The Times, London.

The main focus of the interview was to highlight the current situation in Malta, the FOI's views on EU membership and the anticipated impact on the economy and industry.

On the same day, Mr Borg was interviewed by Tony Barber and Godfrey Grima of Associated News, who were commissioned to draw up this year's Financial Times survey about Malta, due to be published on December 9.

The interview involved various questions related to how the Malta-based manufacturing firms were currently faring, the prospects for the economy and the FOI president's views on industry's position in the evolving EU membership scenario.

Last Friday week FOI council member and FOI environment committee chairman Godwin C. Micallef was interviewed by Barbara Minderjahn, a freelance journalist from Germany. Ms Minderjahn was on an assignment for Radio Germany and some German journals about the problems of waste management faced by the accession countries and how they were tackling them.

During her visit to Malta, Ms Minderjahn also met most of the stakeholders in Government. Mr Micallef briefed her about the FOI and its environment committee, the role the environment committee played since its inception almost ten years ago and its policy paper on the environment.

The FOI official also mentioned the committee's association with the Cleaner Technology Centre (CTC) and the environmental awareness campaign conducted in the mid-Nineties, and its ongoing assessment of environment solutions and their impact on industry.