A front-page story, carried prominently in another section of the Press last week, highlighted the news that “the European Commission concluded that Malta is on track to correct its financial deficit and told the European Council no further recommendations are required at this stage”.
It was further reported that the Commission made a close study of the budget measures announced last month by the Prime Minister, and on the updated convergence plan, submitted by the Maltese government a few days later.
It was reported that the Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner, Joaquin Almunia, was “comforted that Malta has responded positively to the Council recommendations and taken the necessary measures to control the budget deficit”.
The Commission noted that the more significant structural measures included, inter alia, the increase in the departure tax on airfares (now the highest in Europe), the imposition of VAT and excise duty on kerosene (the most savage and indiscriminate budget measure that affected people with the lowest incomes) and the computation of the capital gains tax on sale of inherited estate property (which caused such an uproar because of its avarice).
The most superficial reading of this report suggests that the primary and, perhaps, the one concern of the Commission is to make sure that the Government of Malta cleans its financial stables and to make amends for the years of sustained, capricious overspending by the erstwhile Fenech Adami administration.
Its chief preoccupation was to ensure the successful implementation of the Convergence Programme, on which it agreed no sooner than Malta’s formal accession to the Union.
The Commission asked for a programme to be launched, and Prime Minister Gonzi cobbled up a Programme as he was bidden. He did so without previously consulting either Parliament or the social partners. And the EU Commission is now as pleased as punch.
The Commission has not entered into the merits of the budget’s dispositions and much less was it troubled about the consequences. It has not, to all appearances, interested itself in considerations of social injustice - not even in the government’s proposal to nullify collective agreement provisions, by submitting them to its mincing machine.
Still less does the Commission seem to worry about the inadequacy of the budget measures, in so far as they focus on extracting more money out of a debilitated economy, rather than on measures to stimulate growth and employment.
As far as the EU Commission is concerned, it is the Gonzi government that holds the baby and it is up to the Malta government to see that the baby is adequately fed and properly nursed!
It is up to the Maltese electorate to look after its interests – which is as it should be. The electorate has entrusted the administration of its own affairs to a democratically elected government – and, if it considers that its affairs are not being properly administered, it has the democratic means at its disposal to makes its voice heard.
The most important and useful instrument in this regard is the Parliamentary forum in Malta. But Maltese MEPs could also speak on behalf of their constituents in the European Parliament as well.
Civil society has other means to make itself heard. It can express itself through the medium of the social partners, including the trade unions. It can make appropriate use of the media. It can make all forms of representations. It can exercise its democratic right of protest.
None of this is new to Malta. There have been other times in the past, when the Maltese electorate was on the qui vive and spoke its mind in no uncertain terms.
These rights are safeguarded and guaranteed by EU membership – but they are there to be exercised by EU citizens, in each respective Member State, and not by a Nanny Commission or its bureaucracy.
There is no denying that the EU Commission was within its brief when it tried to bring the Gonzi government to its senses, soon after Malta’s accession. It called on the government to stop overspending, apply the brakes and control the structural deficit, which was of its own making.
The Commission’s concern was, is, and remains, the bottom line. How to go about making amends is the concern of the Maltese taxpayers and electors.
It is not the Commission’s brief to pull the chestnuts out of the fire. Neither is it in its brief to protect those who are in danger of having their fingers burnt.
Brussels has made this very clear.
Those who have ears to hear, let them hear!
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