News • 26 January 2003

Labour’s education fund is a question of priorities

It is now a question of priorities. Understanding Labour’s logic on the Lm1.5 million education fund they will be setting up if elected is intimately tied to the question of EU membership.
Labour’s arguments against EU membership have been roped in with the decision-making power Malta will have to share with 25 other countries on a supranational basis. Sovereignty is a main concern.
Labour’s partnership option, effectively not being part of the EU, means it has to manage to recoup the shortfalls of staying out. The education fund that Labour is proposing is one such strategy.
On one hand, Labour’s education fund is also an electoral ploy designed to battle the optimistic spirit of the Nationalist Party and Alternattiva Demokratika targeted at young people and students. The PN and AD are presenting Europe to young people as a way out to a greater mainland of culture, society and education. Studying abroad, in larger universities offering more courses and eventually more job opportunities, is being bandied about as a winning ace in the hands of these parties.
The students at the University of Malta are very confident about membership, as a recent joint-survey between the KSU and the MIC has shown. Almost two-thirds of students approve of full membership, although a similar amount recognise that there are other alternatives should the Maltese choose not to become an EU member.
Students too are aware of the increase in opportunities that a greater market of 500 million people provides. They too are aware of the stifling realities of small-island life. They look towards Europe as a much-coveted passport to the ‘elsewhere’.
EU membership will enable students and young workers to continue making use of the EU education programmes. Currently, Malta shares 25 per cent of the costs of the EU education programmes along with the European counterpart that takes part in the programme. The other 75 per cent of costs are funded by the EU.
As an EU member, Malta will not pay anything directly for its participation in the education programmes, although it will be handing over a general budgetary contribution to the EU every year EU.
Labour see the condition of free access to these programmes as a myth. They contend that even as an EU member state, these programmes will still be funded by people’s taxes directed to EU contributions which ultimately are used to fund these programmes.
In the spirit of Labour’s foreign policy option, ‘partnership’, the MLP will cushion this shortcoming of staying out of the EU by propping up a Lm1.5 million education fund.
The education fund is being designed for other goals as well as EU education programme participation. These include: taking part in international surveys to set benchmarks in beating Malta’s in-built insularity; setting targets for children and youths within the context of the skills they need to be able to compete with other youths abroad; part of the fund will support Maltese and Gozitan students studying in non-EU countries like the USA, Canada, Australia, Singapore and Japan; and finally, another part of the fund will be directed to post-secondary and tertiary level, including EU education programmes and initiatives.
Which priorities are we pacing importance on?
Labour’s education fund will undoubtedly be funded by the Maltese taxpayer. If non-EU membership means the taxpayer will have to fund education programmes when it could have 25 countries pooling in resources, will this manifest itself in questions of environment as well? Will Partnership be an economic formula to battle what Malta will not be gaining if it chooses to stay out of the EU?
In this light, is Partnership just another sound-bite aimed to make non-EU membership palatable?
On the other hand, we have to take into consideration what monies the University of Malta will be losing out on when foreign students will be able to come to study in Malta free of charge. Consequently, can we expect that the condition of free access to university for Maltese and other EU students mean that a fee will have to be applied to every student attending university? Will the EU spell the end to free access to university?