Just as I predicted, Angelo Micallef (TMID, 7 January) avoided taking up my challenge to prove me wrong when I wrote in my letter: When will Dr Gonzi stop telling fairytales about EU funding (TMID, 19 December).

Everyone, except perhaps Mr Micallef and those of his ilk, accept that the main bait which hooked the majority of Maltese and Gozitan voters during the referendum and election campaign, was the Lm100 million a year in EU funds once Malta joined the European Union.

That promise, made during a Nationalist Party mass meeting, vanished into thin air from the very first year of membership. Not only that, but now respected columnists such as Pamela Hansen, have stated that “we are paying the European Union more than we are receiving from it, much more”!!! Even Noel Grima, editor of The Malta Independent on Sunday wrote that next year Malta will receive from e28 to e56 / Lm12 to Lm15 million and not e121 / Lm52 million.

To cap it all, the editor of another English language newspaper was quoted telling Dr Simon Busuttil (former head of the Malta-EU Information Centre), that he could remind Dr Busuttil of the many lies that were told to Maltese voters in order to depict the European Union as “a bed of roses”!!

No wonder Mr Micallef refuses to take up that challenge. Just as he refuses to argue about the number of foreign workers who are now working in Malta after Malta joined the European Union. And about whether the European Union is giving us orders or not!

And yet, your correspondent has the cheek to write: “How sad that Eddy Privitera’s so-called facts against our membership in the European Union are so made of myths and fairytales...” Why then, is Mr Micallef so scared of proving that my “facts” are just “myths and fairytales”?

As to the Malta Labour Party’s commitment to keeping Malta within the European Union, I have already explained that this is due to Labour’s pre-election commitment to respect the decision of Maltese voters, contrary to the Nationalist Party’s decision to ignore the voters’ decision in 1996.

Labour has never said that European Union membership is better than a partnership agreement with the European Union. Indeed, had such an agreement been made with the European Union, we would have been bound solely by the clauses of that agreement. And no European Union Constitution, hidden under the false name of a “Reform Treaty”, could be foisted on the Maltese people, as will happen now that Malta has to bow to European Union diktats!

I can also now understand why your correspondent is so averse to my “anti-European Union rhetoric”. He knows that my “rhetoric” keeps reminding him and readers of The Malta Independent, how his party in government has fooled so many people for so many years!

At least though, Mr Micallef did write something which made sense, when he wrote: “Save for Mr Privitera and his friends at CNI, which remind us of the good old days.” Indeed, those were the “good old days” when Malta was a truly independent country governed by the Maltese people’s representatives in the Maltese Parliament in Valletta. Today Malta’s government is nothing more than a glorified European Union local council, run by unelected bureaucrats and foreign politicians from Brussels!

Eddy Privitera

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