Malta’s newly-elected and re-elected European parliamentarians will be brushing off the electoral dust and preparing to get down to work with the opening of the European Parliament slotted for Tuesday.

And the country’s chosen five, possibly six depending on the results of the upcoming Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, will certainly have their work cut out for them.

With an electorate today far savvier to the workings of the institution now that we have had two MEP elections, Malta’s MEPs will also be facing a far more discerning Maltese public.

The first MEP election was more a matter of the electorate making blind choices since no candidate at the time had any parliamentary record to speak of. But last month’s MEP election was a far different story, with comparable track records and the electorate’s five years’ experience in understanding the powers of the institution and now having a better grasp of its complicities and inner workings.

Now, as opposed to in 2004, we know much more.

But of course Malta’s chosen five have, hopefully, been working in Brussels for at least a good month now, and have, for the most part, been engrossed in preparatory talks within their respective EP political groups.

Two PN MEPs, it was announced yesterday, have already landed themselves spots on the important Civil Liberties, Internal Market, Petitions, Employment and Social Affairs and the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committees – all of which are of importance for Malta.

Now that they are to roll up their sleeves and get down to work, it is to be hoped that Malta’s MEPs will be able to place the divisions – some bitter – that cropped up during the campaign behind them so as to all pull together the national, as opposed to the partisan, rope.

As we have said in the past in these columns, Malta’s MEPs must now put the uglier elements of the campaign, as well as the past and new partisan divides, well and truly behind them

This is, after all, a question of Malta and the EU, and not one of Nationalists and Labourites – and it also represents an opportunity for our representatives in Brussels to rise above the petty politics of campaigns gone by.