A week ago, I reported that I had asked a spokesperson for Commissioner Ulli Rehn whether the government of Malta had done what it was meant to do by 1 October.

The reply, in quite testy terms, was: “The Council Recommendation issued on 21 June 2013 gave Malta a deadline of 1 October 2013 to take effective action and to report in detail on the envisaged consolidation strategy to achieve the recommended general government targets for 2013 and 2014 specified in the Council recommendation.

“The report, which will be made public, will include the targets for government expenditure and revenue and outline the discretionary measures on both the expenditure and the revenue side that are being taken or planned to comply with the recommended adjustment path.

“The Commission will examine the report with a view to assessing whether Malta is complying with the Council recommendation. This assessment will be published by the end of November.

 “In addition to the report on action taken, Malta has to submit two other documents: i) an ‘Economic Partnership Programme’, by 1 October, detailing the structural reforms that are deemed necessary to support an effective and durable correction of the excessive deficit, and ii) the draft budgetary plan for 2014 by 15 October.

“The Commission shall adopt an opinion on the draft budgetary plan as soon as possible and in any event by 30 November.”

The past week was full of all kinds of other things – the Prime Minister was in New York for the UN General Assembly and he and his wife couple were portrayed hugely smiling at a reception hosted by President Obama; the Minister of Justice continued with his reforms of the army, the head of the army was pushed aside and the chosen few were promoted well above their peers, and the Minister for Energy, whose Chinese wife was engaged by Malta Enterprise without any call for applications to bring in investment from China, sweetened the pill by announcing lower prices for fuel, etc.

But not a word was heard about the government’s commitments to the EU.

So on Friday I again asked for an update and this time the reply was, if anything, even more testy: “All I can tell you at this time is that the deadline for Malta to submit all the documents is 1 October. “

Mr Rehn can be quite something. From the Financial Times Brussels Blog by Peter Spiegel, on Thursday: “After an hour-long meeting this afternoon up in Olli Rehn’s office in the European Commission’s Berlaymont headquarters, Rehn and Pierre Moscovici, the French finance minister, wandered down to a crowded press area to make the expected enthusiastic noises about Paris’s economic reform effort.

“But what might be most noticeable about the appearance was not what was said but what was done: Moscovici handed over a copy of France’s 2014 budget, which he had unveiled in Paris just yesterday.

“Pierre has given me the draft budget law for 2014 for France,” Rehn said, holding aloft the document, marked “Projet de Loi de Finances 2014” on the cover. “This is the real spirit of governance at the European level.”

“To the uninitiated, the display might have appeared to be a bit of empty symbolism, a courtesy Moscovici was paying to the perpetually besieged Rehn. But there was nothing symbolic about the handover. This year, for the first time in EU history, every eurozone member must submit its national budget to Rehn’s office for review within the next two weeks – before they are debated by national parliaments.

“Rehn only has the power to force changes in extreme circumstances. But even in relatively healthy countries he can publicly request tweaks to the budget plans – recommendations his office will issue in mid-November. Finance ministers will hold a special eurogroup meeting to discuss them.

“It is unclear whether politicians in many eurozone countries are fully aware of Rehn’s new powers, granted to him by a legislative package known in EU circles as the ‘two-pack’ for reasons that are too esoteric for even the Brussels Blog to delve into.

“Indeed, when Rehn was in Italy last week, he criticised the government’s decision to scrap a Mario Monti-era property tax, prompting howls of protest from parliamentarians. Rehn caused a similar kerfuffle last month when he told France that further tax increases were stifling economic growth.

“Commission officials are concerned that the inaugural two-pack effort could cause a storm of controversy, and at the press conference Rehn appeared to try to pre-empt any criticism:

“We sometimes hear criticisms with the new European governance. I want to reassure you that the Commission’s role is to make sure commitments made by European member states are respected. This monitoring is essential to the credibility of measures taken by states which, like France, are launching on the path of economic reforms.”

I have quoted Spiegel at some length because if the government intends to put up another pushback-Cecilia Malstrom heroic, it had better beware: Rehn is looking for someone to make an example of.

At the same time, I really feel this is the time Simon Busuttil might nudge Tonio Fenech aside.

I am not talking of what emerged in the David Spiteri Gingell testimony only, nor about the repetitive and hackneyed articles, interviews and speeches he has started to deliver, but more because it was on his guard that Malta’s finances took that awful swallow dive last year on top of obstreperously optimistic forecasts. Busuttil cannot quite go to the country with such a yesterday man.

This, I feel, is the real issue facing Malta and the government will stand or fall by the way it handles the economy. To offer cheap petrol now and cheap electricity next year is the most populistic of approaches. This government seems to believe that with such easing growth will come.

This is not the experience of other countries, but perhaps the government has found the philosopher’s stone. It is true that some countries, especially Italy, have been tempted to go down this road but the coming months may well see the real outcome of such policies, which may well be catastrophic for the countries themselves.

I do not fault the Nationalist Opposition for making a big deal about promotions in the army etc, though I clearly remember (why is no one else remembering this?) the huge amount of complaints there used to be anytime there was a promotion exercise in the army in PN days. I admit though it seems that this time round, like in many other exercises of this kind by the new administration, even Labour supporters are howling in anger.

However, for all the mileage this gets the Opposition, it’s the economy, stupid, once again and every time.

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