Now that the Maltese Presidency of the Council of the European Union is (almost) over, our attention turns to 2018 when for a whole year Valletta will be the European Capital of Culture.

Our capital city will be the focus of attention not just from Europe but from all over the world. Our interest should be that when the day comes Valletta will be spick and span, opening up and showing its treasures and its many buildings and history.

A full list of the activities linked to this year is not yet available, but we are beginning to see the outlines and it looks like being quite attractive. The country would relish to get more details such as were included in the interview with Jason Micallef last Monday. It was fascinating to learn about the inaugural ceremony being held in many squares of Valletta on the same day. We hope the weather does not interfere.

But we also hope that the authorities step in and ban work, especially construction work, that turns a town into a building site. Everyone knew about Valletta 18 and it is no excuse the plans were not issued. There must be a ban on construction work especially that entails cranes, roads being blocked and construction trucks parked everywhere.

But especially the government must step in and persuade the St John’s Co-Cathedral authorities to stop any work on the extension of the Co-Cathedral’s museum. As Mr Micallef said, it is impossible to have Valletta 18 while the huge building works on the museum would be going on.

The work entailed by this extension is enormous. The extension itself is certainly controversial but it has been approved by the planning authority. At the very least, the works can start a year later, after Valletta 18.

But there are other construction projects going on or planned in the near future. There is work to renovate the Valletta Market and of course MUZA, one of the key projects of Valletta 18. These two projects must be hurried up so as to finish before the end of this year and the beginning of Valletta 18.

This is not the time when a group, a body, can extract itself from the rest of society as if it is an independent state within the state. This goes for the church and goes too for the Knights of Malta, although St John’s now belongs to the State and the people of Malta.

The present Pope, if we have to bring in this issue, has over the past months shown the Knights they cannot remain an extraneous body within the church. In fact, last weekend, when he received the Order’s top echelon, they wore normal dark suits rather than the usual flummery with gold braid and the lot. This is a small issue but it shows that the Order cannot remain a state within a state.

This goes more and more for the church. The church cannot be a state within a state. Especially when Valletta and the nation itself are the focus of international attention because of Valletta 18.