He is doing it to us again. For the first 11 years of Dr Sant’s leadership of the Labour Party, the country’s press corps spent most of their time cross-checking his fantastical theories with European leaders. For years we have had to embarrass ourselves as a country asking this Commission President and that European government leader whether there could be such a thing as a Switzerland in the Mediterranean or such a thing as a “partnership” with the EU where we get all the benefits of membership without any obligations.

That was Dr Sant’s promise every day up to the 2003 referendum. He lost that referendum (even if, quite unbelievably he continues to deny he did) because between 1996 and 1998 we also saw for a fact just how fantastical his notions were. Even if outside the EU, he was not allowed to abolish VAT. The EU forced him to replace VAT with another form of direct tax. VAT was a standard international model he promised to abolish, so he replaced it with a direct tax of his own invention that practically ruined our national finances.

In 2003, in ignoble defeat, faced by the anger of his own party and the real risk of his dismissal, he declared his acceptance “of the European reality” to be able to stay glued to his job.

It was soon clear, that “acceptance” was empty talk. He resisted every single development this country experienced due to EU membership. He campaigned to continue to pile up the Maghtab rubbish dump. He campaigned against new sewage treatment plants. He campaigned against waste separation plants. Come to think of it, I wonder why some people speak of not voting PN because of our imperfect environmental record when the only alternative to us would be Dr Sant as Prime Minister.

Then he campaigned (and continues to campaign) against Malta’s entry into the eurozone. He predicted national trauma (as for that matter he did before we joined the EU) and again, even with the dreaded euros in our pockets we are still quite ok, thank you very much.

Now Dr Sant officially renounces his former “acceptance of the European reality”. As if we have not been members for four years already, he wants to take us back to the eve of membership to renegotiate the treaty the people of Malta approved in the 2003 referendum.

Though he has not said so in so many words yet, this is nothing short of a pledge to quit the EU. Again as journalists had to do for the first 10 years of Dr Sant’s premiership, they have had to ask Commission spokesmen (the most recent being Javier Solana, no less) to check if what Dr Sant is promising (a partnership where we are members only in as far as we perceive it as advantageous with opt outs from anything Labour disagrees with) is at all possible.

Of course it is not. We knew this in 1992 when Dr Sant took leadership of his party. We knew it in 1997 when Dr Sant was PM and was bullied by the EU to re-introduce direct taxation when he promised to remove it, even if the application was “frozen”. We knew it in 2003 when Dr Sant’s promise of a “partnership” made in his world of fantasy was turned down and membership in the EU was the national choice instead.

Historians will laugh at this in a hundred years time, but today this is no laughing matter. Back when we seemed like we were dithering about EU membership (between 1996 and the referendum decision in 2003) we were perceived abroad as a country of unreliable fumblers who did not know the first thing about the workings of the EU.

Every time a Maltese journalist stood up in a Brussels press conference to ask whether what Dr Sant was promising was possible, the rest of the room cringed with embarrassment. We were the people who seemed to pretend they were incapable of understanding the basic rules of the game and kept asking the long answered questions of what can and cannot be done.

In 2003, all that changed and that is how we started attracting investment to Malta again. SmartCity would never have chosen Malta while it was unsure about membership. Lufthansa, HSBC, Actavis: all those would not have expanded here again and again had the country not yet made up its mind to “accept the European reality”.

Dr Sant’s commitment to re-open our membership negotiations jeopardises that hard-earned credibility again. Now that the country is losing again its consensus about its association with Europe, we are experiencing a real and present danger of scaring away the investment we have started to attract with an unprecedented momentum.

This is not scare-mongering. This is 2003 all over again. This is the same anti-EU xenophobe who is asking for your vote promising as he did in 1996, in 1998 and in 2003 to introduce policies and legislation that drive us away from our home in Europe. Those policies and legislation will – as they have done before – scare investors away. Labour is a threat to your job: the one you’re in today and the one your sons and daughters will be lining up for in a few years’ time.

Dr Sant is at it again. If he does not accept the European reality, he must suffer his denial alone. It is in your interest, the interest of your children and of your country that the PN is returned to government. While Dr Sant is around you are better off with us.

Austin Gatt is Investments, Industry

and IT Minister