It took a hard-fought referendum and general election 10 years ago to finally settle the issue of Malta’s membership of the EU. A decade later, and its changes all around. Exciting and promising careers are being launched, thanks to the new opportunities and businesses that have set up shop here to enjoy the best of both worlds: a capable workforce and instant and unhindered access to a market of more than half a billion people. But there was one dramatic change that happened to our political landscape that should not go unnoticed.

Making peace with Malta's EU membership

To say that the Labour Party has made peace with the idea of Malta’s EU membership is an understatement. It has even let go of the notion that membership is a blind dinner date with someone who is definitely not your type and where all you can do is to try to “limit the damage” and ensure that, at least, the bill is shared. To hear Joseph Muscat talk about the EU these days is to doubt that it was the Nationalist government which dragged Labour, kicking and screaming, into the Brussels club.

Thank God for small mercies. The last thing this country needs is uncertainty over its relationship with the EU like the one it was capriciously obliged to experience between 1996 and 2003. Knowing that Labour has such a long and rich tradition of taking up political positions which are as dangerous as much as they are ludicrous, the Party’s change of heart comes as a comforting thought. So comforting, in fact, that it makes the rest of us forget that an honourable marking of the 10th anniversary of our joining the EU would have been for Labour to admit it had been in the wrong.

On the ballot sheet

No such luck. Joseph Muscat has already done it himself: from being an ardent anti-EU campaigner to contesting the first MEP elections and becoming one of our first representatives in Brussels. So it is not at all surprising that, as a treat to mark the 10th anniversary, Labour will put on the ballot sheet the person who back then led the anti-EU campaign. The one who left a long trail of choice quotes on the subject, not least describing the would-be influence of Malta’s prospective MEPs as being equivalent to that of whitebait (makku). The small fry is now set to swim in the big pond armed with a set of stock responses to those who point out the inconsistency.

So it’s the straw man argument of “I was never against the EU” (as if that were the question, not Malta’s joining the EU), or “respecting the people’s verdict” (you don’t say). Another favourite, which other Labour MEP candidates are catching on to, is to resort to simplistic jingoism about the “national interests” where “national” is conveniently combined with Muscat’s government and whatever piece of pig-headedness it comes up with.

It's decaf for the PM

Take, for example, the issue of irregular migration. The Nationalist government was never under any illusion that war and poverty would lead to the displacement of populations and that our country’s geographical size and location are what they are. We were also aware that other EU countries faced similar challenges and that, even if they found the Maltese argument convincing, they nevertheless had to face electorates who politically were not similarly inclined.

In this delicate context our response was quiet, hard work. Of course, we may we have been able to do better. With the exception of socialist utopias, there is always room for improvement. But I still believe that we had the general picture right and that we had won our argument with the people who mattered.

Labour’s response was different. After only months in office, it held a group of arrivals incommunicado, ready for dispatch back to Libya, denying them the right to a fair hearing – something that we do not deny even to murderers and drug traffickers caught in flagrante. Many, unfortunately, took this as a subtle hint from high up that this was now a case of no-holds-barred. From internet pages to the streets, where Maltese citizens of colour (who are more Maltese than those who will be buying their nationality from Muscat’s grand passport sale) were harassed and insulted.

Muscat promised he would make the EU “wake up and smell the coffee”. If he still had any friends left after that episode, it was a very weak decaf they served him at the last European Council. The meeting’s conclusions dedicate only a few passing remarks to the issue (these people know how to play to a government’s vanity) with none of them referring to the distribution of refugees and asylum-seekers between EU countries.

Serving the national interest

When it finds that its bravado has not had the desired political effect on its European peers, Muscat’s government resorts to that favourite amongst authoritarian governments: constructing conspiracy theories with the Opposition at its centre. Take the sale of passports. As an Opposition, we have our made views known, as is our right and duty, and – for those who have not yet realised it – in the internet age no news is exclusively local.

But “harming the national interest”? Honestly, I would not even know how to express my disagreement in a way that is half as damaging as the very concept of selling citizenship itself. 

The two cases are hardly extremes and, from what I've been following so far, are representative of two sets of names that will appear on the ballot papers in May. The choice is up to us to send to Brussels and Strasbourg men and women who are capable of seeing the long-term risks and opportunities that go beyond an electoral campaign.