Just as Daesh is getting slowly squeezed and choked out of the major areas it controlled in Sirya and Iraq, one must expect terrorist activity in Europe to ramp up. Radical Islamism had and still has a terrible "advantage" over terrorist movements that preceded it: a significant and renewable ongoing supply of people ready to become kamikazes.

It hardly seems as if this supply has dried up in recent months. So within Daesh the question is going to arise -- or probably it already has -- regarding how to use these available resources to inflict the greatest damage. (Here too, use of such terminology underlines the level of barbarity to which the terrorism of our times has sunk.)

From this perspective, the attacks carried out in Paris, Nice, Brussels, Berlin and Ankara were most "productive". Terrorists will place high priority on a repeat of such actions.

Which is why in the field of European security, the top objective should not be the setting up of some common military defence policy. Rather, it should be a collective and strong effort from all sides to ensure that internal security in Europe is beefed up.

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ELECTIONS IN HOLLAND

It's hardly true that populism has been defeated in the Netherlands. If Wilders' party was not successful in increasing its vote by the margins that had been predicted, it certainly succeeded in shifting the national political discourse towards themes it had championed. It can hardly be doubted that these messages will continue to resonante in the future.

Meanwhile, it was the social democrats/labourites which got punished the most. Their supporters just could not understand how their party simply acted as a prop to austerity policies. In fact, the Labour finance minister Dijesselbloem was also (still is up to now) the chairman of the eurogroup, the committee of eurozone finance ministers. More than once or twice, I heard him speak the same language as the German finance minister Schauble.

Countries caught in the financial discipline of the eurozone have little alternative: when trying to regain economic competitivity, they must place the burdens squarely on employees and pensioners. It's no wonder that these then complain.

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FULL-TIME MPs

The proposal to make Maltese MPs fulltime is again being mentioned. In this way, so the claim goes, risks of conflict of interest will be avoided between the role of a parliamentarian and the position in the world of work that an MP takes up to gain his/her livelihood.

I am not sure that by implementing the proposal, we would really eliminate conflicts of interest. What needs to be said though is that if such a measure is going to be introduced, let this be done with full care, attention and realism. For instance, it must provide for MPs who lose their seat to be given compensation over say three years, till they find another job. It must simultaneously prevent them from taking up jobs in sectors with which they have dealt during their stay in Parliament.

This would require a substantial increase in funds to be voted for the remuneration of MPs. It can only be justified if the number of MPs is radically pruned. I doubt whether the political parties would be prepared to back such a change.