When this country voted to join the European Union, two different arguments came together in favour of the Yes vote.

On the one hand there were many who voted to join the EU for all that it stood for: the rule of law and democracy, peace in Europe, European heritage and civilisation, standards in most areas especially the social side of politics, to be considered as a European people and the freedom to travel, improve our education, and be regarded as citizens of Europe at a time when European countries and its peoples were coming together and embarking (or continuing) towards greater integration and identity.

But as the EU referendum drew near and the people pushing for EU accession became concerned that the polarised situation in the country was risking the historic decision, a second reason was added: the money from the EU would help us to upgrade the country.

Hence the emphasis, in those heady days after the Copenhagen summit in December 2002, on the Lm80 million we would receive in just two-and-a-half years following accession. Hence, too, the controversies which ensued with Labour first claiming that only a trickle of cash will come and that anyway we will not be able to use all the cash that might come our way.

The chickens have now come home to roost: the current issue taken up by the Government of Malta with the European Commission regarding Malta’s Objective One status is indeed a serious issue, considering it may account for between e150 million and e200 million in addition to the around e700 million we are earmarked to receive for the forthcoming EU Budget period 2007 – 2013.

There are valid technical arguments for Malta retaining the Objective One status, but the political arguments are even more valid: Malta would lose its Objective One status without having in reality enjoyed it for more than two years, while some countries have enjoyed it for 13 or 15 years. And Malta would be losing its Objective One status not through having made huge strides in economic growth (if only that had been the case!) but rather through reclassification because of poorer countries joining the EU along with it. Actually, over the past few years, Malta has had static or even negative growth rates.

The visit Prime Minister Gonzi made to Brussels last week and the talks held with various Commissioners and with Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso are the beginning of a long, hard slog. It is futile to sing victory prematurely as much as it is futile to allow dejection to creep in. On the contrary, this will be our induction into the EU decision process.

Other countries and other situations always tell us that things in the EU always begin in a very stark way: black or white, doomsday or easy victory. But then, the tone changes, the threats murmured behind closed doors die down as other avenues are pointed out. The end is usually accommodation and agreement, consensus and smiles all round. That’s what makes the EU great but also what accounts for the CAP waste, the social systems so weighted in favour of workers and employees, and the resulting low economic growth.

It is understandable that many countries have joined the EU to better their economic situation, especially since their past under Communist rule turned them into little better than satellite countries. That, and a yearning for security as well. It is also fair that the EU continues to express the solidarity, which is its trade mark, as it has helped other poor regions achieve the progress they made since their accession to the EU.

The EU, as Jeremy Rifkin says in his books and articles, is becoming the greatest economic bloc in the world, a continent of 450 million people. To have countries, such as mighty Turkey and the Ukraine, change the habits of centuries and overcome near dictatorships to join it must signify there is something valid in the EU model after all.

All this is fine, but the challenge facing Malta’s leaders is still the same: Malta must not be taken for granted. It must not be a walk-over. The experience of last October, when four countries, “on principle” they said, decided Malta must not get the sixth seat in the European Parliament when the Constitutional Treaty now being ratified by the European peoples clearly states that six is the minimum participation level in the Parliament was a bad day for Malta, made even worse by the fact that the government kept mum instead of raising hell.

It seems we are still far too unsure of ourselves to know how we must behave in the EU we have joined. We say, as government sources reiterated only last week, that Malta will never repeat its Helsinki and Madrid shenanigans that shamed us on an international scale and which left such a bad taste for long years afterwards, and it is right that we say so. At the same time, however, we must put forward our arguments and try to persuade the EU bureaucrats of the validity of our arguments with all the force of logic that we can muster.

This is also the time to network with the other member States. There are other States that are unhappy at the prospect of losing EU funds, and others who have other concerns. It is unlikely that Tony Blair, for instance, risks committing his country losing the rebate just before the May election because the EU brass says so. And so on. The government must learn to put Malta’s interests first when that’s the only way it can be heard. Of course, we will always be patted on the head and told to behave, we will always get patronising bureaucrats pointing at our smallness: that’s been pretty much normal when we were trying to persuade ourselves first and the EU then, that we were serious in our determination to join. But we always got the EU to be reasonable and to its credit, it was always so. At Copenhagen in those freezing nights in 2002, nobody, not even the Maltese government, expected the EU to give us so much.

Having said that, we must turn the argument on its head. We joined the EU because it was the right thing to do, the proper historic perspective for our country, because we are Europeans and our place is with the rest of Europe. We joined because the people of Malta saw joining the EU as the step necessary to improve our quality of life, our standards, to ensure the future for ourselves and for our children.

Ironically, as we struggle to join the euro at the first opportunity, as we struggle to curb the deficit, as we struggle to attain growth, ensure job creation, improve the quality of life, we must get on to the curve that ultimately will lead us out of the Objective One status. Our aim is to get out of that level, which we will do when we join the non-Objective One status countries and regions. When our growth will be a real one, not a growth which is only the result of poorer countries joining. We must shake off the assistentialist mentality which was inbred in us during the Mintoff era, when we held the world to ransom and insisted that the world owed us a living. Nobody owes us anything. We do aim to get beyond the Objective One level, but to do so, ironically, we need the Objective One funds for the forthcoming years.