Finally, the St Luke's Hospital incinerator has been closed down. Good riddance. I am not interested in petty political squabbles and will not venture into the nonsensical "who-did-what-first" bickering.
I trust that readers have followed the issue thoroughly and can reach their own conclusions.
Instead, there are three considerations I want to make.
The first is that the government has waited until the very last day of the ultimatum given to it by the European Commission to close down what was technically the equivalent of a battered furnace.
This way of doing things is anything but European. This government pushed relentlessly for European Union membership. Yet, this is another episode that shows that the powers-that-be wrongly assume that their job was done on May 1, 2004. It takes much more than flag waving and rhetoric to make someone truly European.
This brings me to my second point. The authorities that at one time argued that the St Luke's incinerator did not breach EU rules (!) are now saying that "Although several years have passed since the government started to act on the inconvenience it was causing to neighbouring towns, the incinerator has now been decommissioned, thus improving the quality of the air and the environment" (The Health Minister, The Times, December 18).
Who is going to foot the bill for all these years of "inconvenience" to the health of residents of the area, hospital patients, workers and the environment?
Or is one to assume that, if the "inconvenience" has ceased, then its effects over all these years should be forgotten?
One final point: The Environment Ministry was so kind to state that the opposition and, more specifically, yours truly "tried to instil doubts on the new Marsa incinerator".
Whoever wrote the ministry's press release might have overlooked the fact that, in my criticism of the way in which the decisions on the Marsa plant were made, I always quoted and referred to a memorandum and report by the Finance Ministry.
Does the latter qualify as "opposition" too?
A brief follow-up to last week's piece on credit card fees.
The European Commission kept its word to deliver a ruling by the end of the year on the MasterCard case and ordered the card company to scrap its multilateral exchange fee (MIF) in cross-border transactions.
The MIF is the minimum price - varying from 0.4 per cent to 1.2 per cent of sale price - which retailers are obliged to pay for accepting payment cards, in this case MasterCard and Maestro.
The Commission stated that the imposition of an MIF on cross-border transactions is in breach of articles 81 and 53 of the EC Treaty and must be repealed within six months. If the company fails to comply, it will be fined the equivalent of 3.5 per cent of its daily global turnover. MasterCard has already said it will act accordingly but stated that it would still file an appeal to the decision as it is of the opinion that its current system is a fair way of sharing costs.
The Commission argued that the MIF leads to the consumer to foot the bill twice, firstly through annual fees payable to their banks and secondly through inflated prices to make up for this fee. Retailers disagree and state that they are footing the bill for the MIF.
Back in 2002, the European Commission had given Visa until the end of 2007 to do away with its MIF. Brussels has already announced it will take action if Visa's fees are not in compliance with EU rules.
The new system will envisage a more transparent, cost-related billing system. This decision is likely to increase pressure on individual member states to regulate payment card fees in a similar manner. Locally, the Chamber for Small and Medium Enterprises - GRTU has been at the forefront of this campaign.
One hopes regulators will see that savings will really be passed on to consumers.
A Merry Christmas to the editor, journalists, staff and readers of The Times and all their families.
Dr Muscat is a Labour member of the European Parliament and vice president of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee.
www.josephmuscat.com