Six months ago when Irish voters rejected the EU’s hard-fought Lisbon treaty in a controversial referendum, a thank you to Irish voters would, unless dished out with a healthy measure of sarcasm, have been in somewhat poor taste.
But following last week’s summit of EU leaders in Brussels, it seems the Irish ‘no’ vote was actually a blessing in disguise for Malta.
As a result of wrangling by the Irish government at last week’s summit, not only will Malta still be granted an additional seat in the European Parliament during the next legislature, as envisaged in the original treaty signed by EU leaders in Lisbon a year ago, but it will also keep hold of a permanent commissioner in Brussels.
Ireland was the only EU member state that, according to national legislation, was required to hold a referendum on the treaty – aimed at reforming and streamlining the way the EU functions following the bulky addition of 12 new states since 2004.
When Irish voters rejected the landmark treaty last June, the EU, Malta included, issued a collective sigh of dismay.
Specifically in Malta’s case, the additional sixth European parliamentary seat was to be granted through the treaty’s considerable shake-up of the numbers of MEPs manning the EU’s lawmaking body. The seat had stood at risk in the wake of the Irish vote of disapproval.
But EU leaders assembled in Brussels last week were determined to tweak the treaty to render it more palatable to Irish voters, who are scheduled to vote in a new referendum in October, and agreed to bend to suggestions made by the Irish delegation.
As a result of the Taoiseach’s suggestions, the end compromise will see Irish voters receiving legal guarantees on taxation policy, social and ethical issues and the Common Security and Defence Policy with regard to Ireland’s traditional policy of neutrality, among other provisions.
In exchange, Ireland has committed to staging a second referendum by the end of the current Commission’s term, or before the end of 2009.
What is of primary importance to Malta was the Irish demand that the EU does away with the treaty’s provision of trimming down the size of the EU Commission by two-thirds its current complement – or from 27 to 18 commissioners, with member states being allotted a commissioner on a rotating basis. Malta had stood to lose out on its commissioner in the first rotation, and as such lose an important element of its voice in the heart of Europe’s capital.
And although the treaty and its provisions will not formally come into force until all member states, including Ireland, have ratified it, a transitory measure has been drafted through which the parliamentarian shake up – including Malta’s additional sixth European parliament seat – would be implemented as soon as the new treaty comes into place, and not for the following MEP election in 2014.
The general thinking is that that would happen when Croatia joins the EU, most probably in 2010.
And while Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi has confirmed that Malta will be voting in June to elect five MEPs and not six, it is still somewhat unclear how Malta’s sixth seat would be elected.
The ambiguity could, however, be intentional and the ways and means that the government would propose electing Malta’s sixth MEP could very much depend on the results of the June election – on how the five MEPs are split up between Malta’s political parties and on the political stripe the contest’s sixth place runner-up.
The possibility of Malta receiving EU funding, over and above its EU budget allocation, to link Malta to the European power grid as part of the European Economic Recovery Plan, was also secured last week, with EU leaders having taken “resolute action” to enhance energy security, in the form of the provision of e5 billion for interconnection projects under the Economic Recovery Plan. That includes interconnections and connections for the most isolated European countries – a category Malta falls within.