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The interview which Steve Mallia of The Sunday Times had with the prime minister (January 7) was more of a white-washing exercise of the PN government’s dismal performance than anything else!
The main thrust of that interview was to depict the Lm27 million a year in IOUs (not hard cash!) as some kind of a grand achievement. Those Lm27 million a year are on paper only. What the prime minister will actually “grasp with both hands” – as Steve Mallia wrote – we will not know before another three years or so for the first year of the budget period. And another eight to nine years for the whole EU budget period. Past performance is certainly no guarantee that the PN government will succeed in tapping the whole amount. The chances are that it will not, by a long chalk!
A very revealing point in that interview was Dr Gonzi’s own admission – “that Malta managed to get anything at all was down to the government’s initiative to strive for Objective 1 status in 2004, which made the island a net recipient of benefits from the EU rather than a contributor”. The PM further added that they had to argue “till we were blue in the face”. This admission is a very good indicator that come 2013 (just seven years from now), we will lose this net funding (forgetting the many millions EU membership is costing the government, and Malta as a whole), and become a net contributor to the EU budget and not a net recipient.
And the millions of liri or ewros we will have to give to the EU, will not be IOUs but hard cash! Not a very good prospect, is it?
In order for this not to happen, Malta’s economy will have to remain stagnant for the next seven years. This would enable us to retain our Objective 1 status. If our economy progresses, as Dr Gonzi seems to believe, and we go over the 75 per cent of the EU average GDP – a certainty with Romania and Bulgaria joining the once rich country club but now of the poor – then we would become net contributors! In fact the Hon. Tonio Fenech, parliamentary secretary in the ministry of finance, had predicated in July 2004, that the 2007–2013 period will be the last one in which Malta will enjoy the Objective 1 status.
Add to this the fact that it is already known that we will be losing the funds which have been coming from the financial protocol signed by the Labour government in 1980, the prospect is not the kind of future voters were given to understand by the PN spinners, the European Movement, the IVA movement and those other organisations which joined in the chorus to make Malta a vassal state of the EU, is it?
The “targets” being reached, as told by Dr Gonzi to Steve Mallia – such as the deficit downturn – are being reached mostly at the expense of Maltese and Gozitan workers and their families. While this is pleasing the EU moguls, and a section of the business community, it is angering a wide swathe of the people.
As I wrote in my last letter (January 15), the PN had played a trick on voters when making them believe that untold millions of Ewros will be descending on us from the EU heaven. While reality proved that at best, we can only get a quarter of thus Lm100 million a year promised in 1998. At worst we might get around Lm14 million a year (still much better than the 20 per cent the PN government managed to get in the pre-accession period!) – as much as Dom Mintoff squeezed out of Britain in 1972, 33 years ago! I leave it to your readers to make their own calculations as to the value of Lm14 million in 1972 and Lm14 million in 2007 – 35 years later!
And yet the prime minister had the guts to say “yes, Malta will be making a contribution… But our economy is getting 1 billion euros in return. That’s massive!”
Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched, and its Maltese equivalent – “Tghoddx il-Flieles qabel ifaqqsu” – are two sayings with Dr Gonzi should keep well in mind, next time!
Eddy Privitera
Mosta
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