It is truly incredible that weeks after the government hurriedly pushed the new-and-not-so-improved citizenship bill through Parliament, and at the same time removed the Individual Investor Programme’s largest fly in the ointment, the secrecy clause, that the legislation is still sitting on a shelf waiting to be implemented. This alone says a great deal about the programme itself.

Parliament had approved the amendments to the citizenship law, but the government only stopped short of publishing the accompanying legal notice following local and international outcry.

The government and the Opposition are now locked in negotiations over tweaking the other unsavoury aspects of the legislation. And while both sides of the political equation are holding true to their word to not reveal the contents of those discussions, it is believed that a middle ground being sought between the government’s version of the legislation and the Opposition’s demands will be very difficult to achieve.

That is because although the contents of the discussions are being kept under wraps, it is very difficult to imagine any sort of compromise between these two very contrasting opinions.

On the one hand we have a government that was willing to grant citizenship to whoever could afford it, provided they pass the correct due diligence tests, without ever needing to set foot in or invest one cent in the country over and above the price of citizenship.

On the other hand, we have an Opposition that is demanding that citizenship comes at a higher price – that would-be citizens will be required to reside in Malta for some period of time and that they tangibly invest in the country in such a way to create jobs.

Discussions over these, and possibly other points, are said to have been long and heated, but quite frankly it is hard to imagine how the two sides will ever be able to see eye-to-eye given their drastic differences of opinion.

And, in the meantime, we have had the finance minister’s botched, or simply truthful, explanation of the programme before a European parliamentary committee, when he admitted that the programme had been rushed through Parliament, and more.

More recently, we have had the news that Malta’s citizenship programme is to be debated in the European Parliament next month after practically every political grouping in the EP raised the alarm. And even more ignominiously, the debate will be officially entitled “EU Citizenship for Sale”.

Joseph Daul, the chairman of the European People’s Party, summed up the perception of Malta’s citizenship sale when he stated this week: “The citizenship scheme as adopted by the Maltese Parliament in recent weeks seems to be a clear abuse of EU citizenship and Schengen rules. Even if the Maltese give in to reason, and drop this scheme, it remains important that the European Parliament debates this issue. EU citizenship comes with rights and obligations. We will remain vigilant to make sure that these rights and obligations are respected.”

Yes, Mr Daul is the chair of the political grouping to which Malta’s Opposition belongs, but his statement neatly reflects what many across the European political divide feel as regards the prospect.

As a result, Malta’s reputation has undoubtedly suffered a great deal of harm through the IIP, and the programme has not even been implemented yet.

The damage has been done and even if the government were to ditch the programme completely, the new image that the country is suffering will stick forever to a certain extent.

With the dropping of what was perhaps the most controversial detail of the programme, that the country’s new citizens were to have remained ‘secret’, the IIP has not all of a sudden become a respectable one – it has merely become a little less unrespectable.

As matters stand, those who are to apply for Maltese citizenship will still not be required to even set foot in their new country at any point in their lives. The programme is still a flat out citizenship programme and there is no residency requirement that will eventually lead to full-blown citizenship as other countries have done. Nor is there any need to make a tangible investment in the country, tangible in that it creates employment.

Yes, there is the ‘contribution’ to the National Development Fund, but why couldn’t the government have considered a lower contribution coupled with a more and committed tangible investment into the country where it is needed most – in quality employment?

But the government seemed to think that all this is just fine – that as long as another country does this or that, that it is all well and good for Malta to do as well.  This kind of attitude is simply not acceptable. Its tone has, thankfully, now changed to a certain extent, evidenced at least by it having sat down at the negotiating table with the Opposition.

Malta needs to be leading the way, innovatively so, by creating the most respectable programme of its kind in the world, and not simply selling out to marketing ploys and casting the widest citizenship net possible.

The government has said that the secrecy clause, which was most likely one of the programme’s leading marketing ploys, was the suggestion of the concessionaires. This argument does not wash, for the government could have simply ruled out such a preposterous suggestion – but it did not until it began to get wind of the inevitable maelstrom that the programme, and in particular the secrecy clause, was to cause.

Even with this damage limitation exercise of removing the secrecy clause and the negotiations with the Opposition, a lot of damage has been done, much of it irreparable, by the government’s initial approach to the matter. That approach was short-sighted and not serious enough to offset the natural misgivings associated with selling Maltese, and consequently EU, citizenships.

Having failed in its first attempt, but no doubt having attracted a great deal of interest from prospective new citizens, the best the government can now do is to rectify this programme further into what it should have been from the beginning – anything short of that will bring the country and its citizens into disrepute for years to come.

And in the meantime, the whole thing has been put on ice while the government and Opposition negotiate. This state of affairs should be settled and the programme reinvented into a more acceptable format, before next month’s debate in the European Parliament, where Malta will no doubt be subjected to a lot of unwelcome scrutiny and criticism if Malta is to salvage what is left of its hard-won reputation as a serious country in all respects.