In the European Union, efforts to ensure transparent and “free” competition give great importance to the consideration of state aids. In the US, the major emphasis is placed on reviewing whether a company has succeeded to dominate a market or to secure control over it.

One can understand why such different approaches are being followed. The single European market is being constructed out of a number of national markets that were run according to national rules. In European practice, alliances frequently emerged between private interests and public decision makers, in order to protect and promote “national” enterprises, not least when they stepped outside their frontiers.

The single European maket could hardly let these methods continue. A main aim of competition policy therefore became that of removing all undue state aids.

Those who run the EU’s competition policy concentrate in their hands significant power, and it is increasing. At present, they are using the tools at their disposal to intervene in a sector which up to now has remained outside the competences of the European Union since member states wanted to retain control over it, namely the setting of taxation on the income of persons and corporations.

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Start-ups

When estimating growth trends in economic performance and its vibrancy, a useful indicator is the number of start-ups, big and small. Here, we don’t use it often enough and that’s a mistake. An objective of economic policy should be to encourage and safeguard new enterprises as they are launched.

It is true that many such initiatives take the shape of just one self-employed individual who then continues to operate in this mode. Which is what happens for instance with professional people. Still even when their endeavours are being considered, methods exist by which to estimate the impact of new initiatives.

The greater the number of start-ups, the better the chances are that the economy will be on a future roll. And vice versa.

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Toni Abela

The news that Toni Abela will be exiting the political scene to join the EU’s court of auditors was bitter sweet.

I’ve known Toni since the early eighties. We used to meet in the afternoon at the GWU cafeteria soon after noon. Right from the start, I liked his views very much as well as the stands he would take, although I did not always understand his sense of humour (it’s a problem which persists to this day).

Even when I totally disagreed with decisions he took – such as when he resigned abruptly as President of the Labour Party, in which post he was my immediate successor – I still believed that his intentions were genuine and transparent. When after some years had elapsed, he came back to the Labour fold, among those who immediately agreed with this was Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici.

Over the years, Toni Abela’s political contributions were extremely valid. What the Labour Party and the Maltese courts will be losing, shall be a gain for the European court of auditors, even if initially the latter might find themselves unsettled by his sense of humour.