In 2003, just a few weeks before the EU accession referendum, our company (Standard Publications) held a packed business breakfast to hear Dr Alfred Sant make the case for rejecting accession.

At the end, during question time, I made a point that had been inspired by Thomas L Friedman’s book The Lexus and the Olive Tree. I posed the argument for joining the EU in roughly these terms: imagine getting a brand new computer with all the gadgets, but then you don’t connect it to networks or the Internet. It could be useful for playing games on, but its potential will be vastly underused. It would only get its real potential from being inserted in a network, in Malta’s case in 2003, the EU.

Sadly, Dr Sant did not get the point.

I still think that this was the most cogent reason for Malta joining the EU. On its own, Malta had done much already, but to get the benefit of its potential, it needed to be inserted into a network, a network of highly-advanced countries that could help it on its way to attaining higher growth, which would open up for it far bigger markets, which in turn would create a vast hinterland in which Malta and the Maltese could thrive.

Six years later, we can now see this did happen. Our young people have benefited from EU membership in that they can now study and do research in any other EU member state. Our exports to the EU have been encouraged by the absence of Customs. Our university and other teaching institutions are benefiting from being inserted into a vast network of similar research institutions and deriving the benefits therefrom.

Our laws have benefited from being inserted into a wider legal system and our financial services system has benefited from the comfort of being inside the EU framework rather than staying outside.

But just as joining the EU was no panacea for all our ills, so too it has not so far changed one fundamental facet of the Maltese character. I call this facet the Strowger inheritance. For many of our readers I should explain that Strowger was the name of an outdated telephone system that Malta got cheap – third or probably fourth-hand – in the 1980s.

It was faulty, you got no end of crossed lines and missed connections. It would have been completely unable to handle today’s traffic, which involves not just voice but also text and data. With it, our IT capacity would not have been able to connect.

We were isolated as a country, with an unclear foreign policy and alignment, and with this system we were isolated from the rest of the advanced world, since connections were faulty and haphazard.

In fact, one of the first tasks of the 1987 administration was to jettison the old system and buy a new and advanced system which is the one we have today. That enabled us not only to boast we had a new system but also, and more importantly, to derive all the benefits that could be obtained from having such an advanced connection.

But meanwhile the Strowger mentality had found deep roots in our psyche, or maybe it was the other way round: we made do with Strowger because that is the way we are – we make do.

We still make do with our buses: patching them up and being patient with their faults and outdated design, well beyond – far beyond – their use-by date. We make do with our cars, still insisting on keeping them for years and years, even when they have become a danger to our health. This year, for instance, has seen an increase in the number of cars that were registered, but many of these were second-hand cars found cheap in Britain. As those who brought them over have now found out, they were indeed cheap at the price, but their maintenance costs are out of all proportion.

In many, so many, cases, this mentality still reigns supreme in areas of our manufacturing and our construction sectors. I know this may sound offensive to those who aim to compete with the best, but while there are indeed many of these, there are also those who rely on outdated technology, many times bought cheap because it was bought second-hand or, in the case of construction, who have absolutely no idea how a dwelling place for the 21st century should be designed, what kind of comfort people have come to expect, what kind of furniture they should get. No wonder that such ‘creations’ are left on the market while the upmarket ones are taken.

The same Strowger mentality also seems to have made inroads in the lower segments of the tourism sector, about which one can find so many comments on the many websites from disappointed visitors, that are now read by one and all and for which no redress is indeed possible.

In short, the Strowger inheritance can be summarised as being low on quality, high on getting anything cheap, high too on making immediate as against medium-term gains, and thinking that just because we are comfortable with making do, then our customers must make do as well.

This mentality is still prevalent, not just in the private sector but also, and possibly even more, in the public sector. Efforts have been made to upgrade the system, computers have been purchased, quality charters have been drawn up, but then you still find many still prefer to have something signed, and prefer paper to email. Even to get what is known as an e-signature, you have to present yourself in person, get your photo taken and sign. And, as is also known, not many of the immense possibilities of e-government have been launched and retained simply because the civil service would not have it.

The government, both in obedience to EU rules and also because it makes sense, has, over the past few years, created a huge number of authorities, the aim of which is to serve as a correction for and overseer of government departments’ activities. Over the years, as we all know, these authorities have become a parallel civil service, albeit with higher wages and packages. There were so many of them that at times they came into collision with each other and now the government is in the process of slimming the whole lot down and merging some of them together (imagine the pain and the frustration, let alone loss of face).

They have collectively come to mean overweening arrogance, but that is also another aspect of a lack of professionalism. In some key cases they have also come to signify a lack of proper enforcement. A key example of this is in the many contracts that bind people to one or other of the big communication networks, contracts which are so easy to sign but very difficult to get out of. Again, it’s the Strowger mentality. Or the taxi or the karozzin mentality: once I get you in my power, you are not free to leave.

So it was not just a question of getting people to agree to the difficult step of joining the EU. Once we had become members, we were still not able to kill off the Strowger mentality. This mentality seems very much rooted in the Maltese psyche and many, far too many, do not seem to have understood that by cutting corners, especially where service to clients is concerned, they are not really making money. On the contrary, they stand to lose both clients and money.

All around one finds deep dissatisfaction that the country has not registered the drastic improvement and quality upgrade that perhaps too facilely were promised on EU accession. Nor are problems resolved by throwing money at them. Unless a coherent and comprehensive effort is made to eradicate what I have called here the Strowger mentality, we will still be sloshing around the lower reaches of the EU in the years to come. Other countries, which joined the EU at the same level as us, if not worse, have now overtaken us.

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