I refer to the editorial entitled Avoiding mistakes (TMID, 30 January).

Like the Nationalist Party, you seem to treat the way we manage our relationship with the European Union as something sacred, which should never be criticised by anyone, including the party in opposition which represents roughly half the Maltese population. The Malta Labour Party’s policy on the euro is well known and was clearly explained by Dr Alfred Sant more than a year ago. We acknowledge the responsibilities and opportunities which membership in the eurozone brings with it, and we intend to make the best out of this membership when in government.

However, a balanced political assessment of how membership of the eurozone was achieved, and how it affected our people, is not only justified, but necessary. To put public finances in shape to satisfy the membership criteria the government had, among other things, to apply fiscal tightening which has increased the tax burden on families.

After years of being told by the Nationalist administrations that “money is no problem” and more recently that “the country’s finances are sound”, the Gonzi administration embarked on a belt tightening exercise which has badly affected the quality of life of many Maltese families. Do you really expect us not to make this observation of the reality that has hit our people in the last few years?

Regarding the timing of the eurozone membership, we too have an opinion about how this has affected our people. The Malta Labour Party agrees that membership in the eurozone was indeed a laudable objective for Malta. But the achievement of the formal criteria relating to the management of public finances have to be enhanced with the real convergences on the criteria set out in the Lisbon Agenda – an important consideration that the Nationalist government has very conveniently ignored. May I suggest that you as a journalist do not make the same mistake being made by the government in judging economic and social success merely on the attainment of only one limited set of public finances criteria.

In the Lisbon Agenda the EU has set very ambitious targets for its member states to achieve economic and social success by the year 2010. Even though the Nationalist government has set much lower targets than those of the EU, it has so far failed to come even near to most of them.

For instance, according to Eurostat, the employability rate in Malta in 2006 was only 54.8 per cent, the second lowest in the EU just ahead of Poland, which however is now increasing employment at a much faster rate than us. The EU average at the same time was 64.4 per cent.

The standard of living of the Maltese is also slipping under the Gonzi administration. Our GDP per capita in 2007 was 76.3 per cent of the EU average, a drop of 4.5 per cent from the level achieved in 2002, and Eurostat is predicting that it will fall again this year.

Maltese families do not need to understand these figures because they know from experience that their standard of living has been deteriorating steadily under the Gonzi administration. There are many more examples that show how under the Gonzi administration the country is underachieving in many economic and social criteria.

Had the Nationalist government given more importance to the broader management of economic and social issues as defined in the Lisbon Agenda, rather than just the achievement of the Maastricht criteria for eurozone membership, then we would certainly have improved our competitiveness as a country and created a fairer and happier society.

The Labour Party wants to reap the full benefits of EU and eurozone membership, but we do not suffer from an inferiority complex when we discuss and manage our relationship with the EU. In a democratic system of government there are no sacred cows in what we politicians, and you journalists, should discuss on the economic and social agenda of our country.

The Malta Labour Party will continue to do this because we owe this to the people who have elected us and who at the end of the day are affected by the decisions that are taken by their government.

Dr Charles Mangion

Deputy Leader for

Parliamentary Affairs

Malta Labour Party