He was in Germany the previous day and had to be at the airport at 5.30am to get the connecting flight to Malta.

It was 7pm and Hans-Gert Poettering seemed as fresh as a daisy after a day of talks with the top people of the Nationalist Party. He still had other engagements to attend starting from the Missa da Requiem at St John’s Co-Cathedral and also wanted to experience walking in Valletta in the balmy early evening.

This visit to Malta, he told me, had been very interesting. Mr Poettering, chairman of the EPP-ED group in the European Parliament, had been to Malta twice before but this was a special visit. The next day he was to assist at the inauguration of the presidency of his close friend, Eddie Fenech Adami.

Earlier that day he had had talks with Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi and took part in the press conference which introduced the PN candidates contesting the European Parliament elections. They are a very good blend of young and experienced people, women and men with a professional background he told me.

He was happy to note that the new prime minister has every intention of carrying on the same policies of Dr Fenech Adami with regard to EU membership, as is the PN government.

He also met Dr Joe Borg, the first Maltese Commissioner, (‘an excellent person,’ he described him) and also Jason Azzopardi, who will be the government’s side new Observer in the European Parliament until 19 July.

Malta is now fully committed to a future within the EU, he told me, and the coming European elections should lead to a reinforcement of this commitment through support for those who have always been in favour of membership rather than for the nay-sayers who had been against membership and have now changed.

This visit to Malta was part of a series of visits to the new accession countries. In the past three weeks he visited Slovenia, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic and after leaving Malta he will make his way to Cyprus. Later on this month he will visit Poland and the three Baltic States: Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

‘We must learn from each other,’ he stressed, ‘from our new colleagues and from the people in the newly-acceding countries, as they must learn from us.’

Together, all must rediscover the European ideals and principles on which the EU, and more specifically the European People’s Party, is based: the unity of the continent, democracy, freedom and liberalism, pluralismÖ

Hopefully, now, the way looks open to have the text of the European Constitution approved and signed in the coming months. This will be a great sign underlining all these ideas and principles. He and his party are very much in favour of including apt words pointing out Europe’s Judaeo-Christian heritage. Mr Poettering knows that Prime Minister Gonzi fully agrees with this position, which is also strongly supported by the EPP side of the group but not accepted by the ED side. He would like the Irish Presidency to include this as one of the five points for the last Intergovernmental Conference to decide on before the final signing.

However, even if this is not accepted by the other parties in the European Parliament, many Christian ideals are already enshrined in the draft Constitution and Article 51 guarantees the legal status of churches and communities.

The coming election for the European Parliament will be fought on a national basis. The EPP manifesto was adopted at a February meeting in Brussels but it will be as a sort of addendum to the election programme prepared by the national parties.

This does not mean that it is each party on its own. There will be an exchange of speakers and joint campaigns. But the situation as he explained it, is different from the PES which says that all member socialist parties, from Vilnius to Marsaxlokk, will campaign with the same campaign theme.

There have been some discussions and also disagreements between the two sides of the group. EPP is the party bringing the former Christian Democrat parties together with parties such as Forza Italia and Raffarin’s party. The British Conservatives are the main members of the ED party.

The main dispute between the two sides regarded the diverse attitudes to the draft Constitution. Article 4 of the group’s statute has now been changed to enable ED to have its own approach to the Constitution and to institutional thinking as a result of the Constitution.

In spite of this dispute, Mr Poettering sought to emphasise, the two sides agree on the main values: the primacy of the human being, Christian ideals and solidarity. This question regarding the Constitution need not split the two sides.

Moreover, Mr Poettering hopes that both parts will increase their share of the vote in the approaching EU elections.

Once that happens, another of his battles will become all-important. He has long been campaigning that the president of the European Commission must come from that party group which enjoys majority support in the European Parliament.

That is not the situation with regard to the outgoing Commission and Parliament, for Romano Prodi, from the Socialist side, does not reflect the present EPP-ED majority in the European Parliament.

Mr Poettering said: ‘I have been making this clear for months, , so that if the PES side comes out on top, it too will have the right to have a Commission President from its side. In that battle for majority, the battle to be fought in Malta, for the majority of the five seats which Malta has been allocated, becomes crucial.’

His parting shots were that in Europe, the freedom and the Constitution of every Member State are respected, as are all member countries, all peoples and their cultures, whether big or small. What is crucial to Europe is the psychology of a European: understanding oneself in the context of a nation and a culture in the wider context of a common European civilisation and

heritage.