Malta’s aspirations of joining the 30-member Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), at least in the next wave of admissions, appears to have fallen on hard times with the news that the European Union has backed down from its demand that eight of its member States, including Malta, are admitted simultaneously.
The news comes just over a month before the OECD’s next meeting, when it will decide on whether and how to expand its ranks.
Malta had formally applied to join the influential Paris-based group of nations back in September 2005 and the EU has been pushing for a simultaneous admittance of the eight EU member States that have applied for OECD membership – Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria.
Turkey, however, has threatened to veto the admission of Cyprus over its continued disagreement on the issue of northern Cyprus, leading the EU to rescind its demand that all eight countries join together in the next wave of admittance, segments of the European press have reported this week.
Other OECD members, meanwhile, are arguing that Malta and its fellow seven OECD European hopefuls simply do not carry the economic weight to form part of the exclusive club’s membership.
The OECD, with 19 of its 30 members being EU member States, is to meet on 15 May to decide on its expansion plans through which it envisages extending its ranks by some 10 members. Estonia and Slovenia are now being deemed favourites among the EU candidates, along with Chile and Israel.
This week, EU ambassadors to the OECD retracted from their position that the remaining eight EU members be admitted to the OECD together in the next wave and softened its stance by agreeing their admission could be sequenced in the “medium term”.
The eight EU applicants, including Malta, are being considered to be of lower significance on the economic world stage by the United States and other OECD members, which instead are said to be pushing for the inclusion of emerging economies such as Brazil, China, India and Russia.
The OECD is a forum that shapes international policy in a wide array of areas of an economic and social nature, but has recently reinvented itself as an adviser to governments on issues connected with globalisation, including tax havens, bribery and the Internet.
The OECD’s members once accounted for some 80 per cent of total global economic output, a percentage that has now dropped to 60 per cent and is expected to continue to fall as non-member, developing countries gradually catch up with the richer member States.
The revamping of the organisation is being spearheaded by the United States, which, together with Japan, funds most of the organisation through its contributions. The US is insisting that the OECD expands to better represent the new global distribution of wealth on the one hand, while limiting new memberships so as to keep the organisation streamlined.