Mr Privitera’s valiant effort at refuting criticism of his letter (“A preposterous suggestion” of 2 June), tried to outdo William Shakespeare by writing “Much ado about nothing” all over again. But he failed magnificently. Maybe his next work should be titled “Keeping to the point”.

The letter he replied to had specifically questioned Mr Privitera’s claim that the EU  ‘Yes’ camp had resorted to scaremongering tactics before the EU referendum – so it is difficult to understand what Mr Privitera is getting at.  He rants about Malta’s ‘sovereignty’ but seems to have clean forgotten that “loss of our sovereignty” (and ‘our freedom’) was an over-exploited scaremongering mantra used to the full by opponents to EU-membership. Moreover, this had been discussed ad nauseam at the time so, please Mr Privitera, let us not go there again.

Mr Privitera also burbled on and on disconnectedly about the recently suggested constitutional amendment for a two-thirds majority in Parliament in Malta’s for withdrawal from EU, about ‘membership in the EU costing Malta more millions, about the of cost of living, about hunters etc, all of which do not have the remotest connection with Mr Privitera’s scaremongering accusation.  

Mr Privitera did mention a flyer, allegedly issued by the pro-EU lobby, which stated that joining the EU was a choice ‘between being African or European’. Given the political climate of those times, this was a reasonable speculation.  Nothing against Africans mind you; but was there not a certain unstable North African political leader with terrorist tendencies who happened to be our nearest neighbour to our south? It must also be recalled that previous government administrations had been cosying up to Gaddafi and other nice people like Nicolae Ceau?escu and Erik Honneker (who were also eventually unceremoniously executed by the people they had betrayed). This certainly didn’t make people cheerful about the uncertainties facing Malta if she stayed outside of Europe. No scaremongering here, this was a very true concern. So, if such a flyer was indeed distributed, it made supreme sense as it reflected realistically on worries that Malta might find herself a lone sitting duck (isolated, if you like, Mr Privitera) in the middle of the Mediterranean 

As to this business of the ‘Yes’ camp, being “aided and abetted by a procession of top EU officials, ministers” – Mr Privitera is disappointingly fuzzy and vague.  He refers only to one commissioner, Günther Verheugen who, Mr Privitera tells us, was “most menacing” and “all intent on scaring the wits out of Maltese voters!” (note Mr Privitera’s signature exclamation mark for emphasis).  But Mr Privitera delivered no beef by quoting one single ominous word of Mr Verheugen’s dialogue – or naming other members of this “procession” who came to give us the willies.  ncidentally, was it not Mr Verheugen who was threatened with having his tongue bitten out by an EU membership opponent – or something of that sort? 

The fact remains, Mr Privitera, that a lot of daft nonsense was put out to turn people against the EU in those days. But, having joined the EU, we still have our Parliament, our elections, our Constitution, our language and our jobs. We have not lost our freedom. We are now Maltese citizens with the added bonus of being citizens of the European Union. We haven’t been invaded by foreign workers or European hordes, we have not ended up sweeping streets in other EU countries – neither have we become bootlickers. We have not betrayed our Christian principles by joining the EU, neither have we lost millions because of EU agricultural policies which ‘deprive the hungry’. We have not paid millions for EU militarisation or been complicit in taking millions out of the pockets of deprived citizens in the EU. Our national language has not been scrapped. Maltese has not become the language of the kitchen or become extinct; it has not been replaced by a newly-hatched version of English – on the contrary, it is an official EU language. Maltese is still the language of our Law Courts, we have retained our national identity and there has not been an onslaught of foreign central European education (whatever that meant) – just to mention a few juicy unfulfilled prophesies from those years.

One can only repeat: Thank goodness common sense prevailed in the end so that our children, grandchildren and generations to come will grow up as European citizens and not be eternally condemned to isolation.

G.G Debono

SLIEMA