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Karl Schembri
A Maltese embassy with Chinese furniture – that’s the latest news from the Lm9 million Brussels property opposite the European Commission building that is to be turned into Dar Malta.
It will be no shop window for arty Maltese furniture or anything national – all the furniture and interior furnishings for Dar Malta are coming straight from none other than the People’s Republic of China.
And just to confirm the seriousness of this piece of weird news sandwiched in an otherwise serious Times report from Brussels, Maltese officials reportedly went directly to China “purposely to choose and order the furniture and fittings that were eventually produced specifically by Chinese manufacturers for Dar Malta”.
The furniture comes as part of a long standing government agreement with China, which donates around Lm100,000 in kind to Malta every three years. Government sources said the decision how the money is spent rests with the finance ministry. They added it will not be really “Chinese furniture” but “furniture made in China” – hence there should be no identity crisis for the 13-storey building meant to house Malta’s Permanent Representative to the EU Richard Cachia Caruana and his entourage of diplomats and EU experts.
Asked if he felt comfortable having a Maltese embassy filled with furniture donated by a foreign government, Foreign Minister Michael Frendo said: “It’s not a question of filling our embassy with foreign furniture; it’s a question of how to best spend the money given to Malta.”
Still, the news is expected to raise eyebrows as it evokes memories of Malta’s close connection to China under former prime minister Dom Mintoff’s rule, and putting into question the embassy’s dubious image of sovereignty.
Since the news of the multi-million investment in Brussels hit the headlines three years ago, government has defended its decision on the grounds that Malta needed vast office space to house both an embassy and the EU permanent representation staff.
According to The Times, reconstruction works on building nr 25 in Rue Archimede are finally at an advanced stage following years of stagnation.
In July 2004, a month after MaltaToday broke the story about the Brussels property purchase, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi approved in Parliament an additional Lm9 million to that year’s budget solely for the building – almost half of the Lm18.6 million overall additional public expenditure approved for 2004.
Amid public outrage, Gonzi explained that he needed Lm2.5 million to renovate the Lm6.5 million property bought from Belgian real estate agents Cofinimmo and rid it of cancer-inducing asbestos.
Government had originally said it should open by January 2006, now The Times reported a government spokesman saying it will open in February 2007.
The rundown building was meant to be “totally redeveloped” by its former Belgian owners. In its 2003 annual report, Cofinimmo stated that the building it had just acquired concerns “an office building that has to be entirely redeveloped” and that renovation works were foreseen to be concluded in the second quarter of 2005.
The government has banked on leasing some of the embassy’s floor for commercial interests although it is still unclear whether tax would have to be paid for those floors.
Leading entrepreneur Albert Mizzi was appointed as head of the negotiating team and had declared that it was a “great deal”. He had also told the Nationalist Party newspaper il-mument that he generously worked for free. “All I asked for was a plane ticket to Brussels,” he said, even though he was still entitled to a free ticket anyway as a former Air Malta chairman.
According to an investigation by The Times, the choice was “by far the most expensive among the purchases made by the 10 new member states”, with Malta’s property costing almost three times as much as Poland’s – the largest of the accession states.
MaltaToday had also revealed that the recurrent expenditure for the permanent representation costs around Lm3,000 daily.
kschembri@mediatoday.com.mt
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