With his actions over the past days, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has put Malta squarely in the footsteps of Hungary and its maverick Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
The Hungarian prime minister got elected on a programme of populistic appeal and defiance of the EU.
He is a cocky man, as all who see him or meet him can tell, and as he appeared when he visited Malta some years ago.
But his defiance of the EU lasted for just a short while. Of course, there are differences between his stance and that of Dr Muscat. In the case of Hungary, which is not yet in the euro, although the main concerns regarded the rule of law, the Hungarian government was brought to heel by means of financial pressure. Even so, today Orban is still a pariah at EU meetings: other leaders shirk appearing with him (as they used to do with Berlusconi).
In his appearances at European Councils since he was elected, Dr Muscat was welcomed, feted even, as the new boy in the group. But now, after yesterday’s clear defiance of the massive vote in the European Parliament, he will not be so welcome. The EU does not forget or forgive easily such defiance.
Before Viktor Orban there were others – Georg Haider and Kurt Waldheim of Austria come to mind, and the Greek colonels, etc. The EU bided its time. It is not the EU’s practice to go into frontal attacks.
Malta then has the added disadvantage of being small, the smallest member of the Union. But, as was clear from the vehemence of the speeches on Wednesday, its defiance cannot be overlooked because it is coming from the EU’s smallest member.
Whether the government of Malta calculated its strategy so as to show how little it estimates the EU in this period of rampant euroscepticism, is uncertain. More probably the government was led down the garden path by the wrong advice or maybe other so far hidden interests which did not find any gatekeeping on the part of the government.
The die is now cast, or rather, it will be cast when the first passports begin to be sold. There is yet that little gap between now and the actuation of the plan. There may still be room for a face-saving formula to be found.
But the words spoken in the European Parliament on Wednesday and those uttered by Dr Muscat yesterday are at antipodes not just in what was said but also in what they implied.
Dr Muscat kept insisting that citizenship is of national competence. This point was admitted by many, but then, as Viviane Reding said, the citizenship of a Member State is also a citizenship of the Union. This point is not yet clear in the legislation and the treaties so now Malta’s defiance will push the EU to make this clearer.
The Commission will start the ball rolling by examining whether the Maltese law is in conflict with any parts of the EU legislation and/or treaties. Malta may steam ahead with its issuance of passports but may later be held to account.
There can also be implications with regards to Malta’s membership of the Schengen area. As was pointed out in Wednesday’s debate, if the perception grows that Malta is giving out passports to criminals or oligarchs, other Member States may well decide not to accept any Maltese passport. The Schengen authorities have already blocked millions of Romanians and Bulgarians because of similar concerns, even though the two countries have completed their Schengen preparations. Then again, no one of the four Labour MEPs who spoke mentioned that severe vetting will be in place: they were more comfortable to claim that Malta was being picked on.
It is true that different Member States have different regimes as regards residency and maybe even citizenship but none go about it in the blatant and mercantilistic way (and bragging and holding seminars etc about it all over the world) as Malta did. If Malta wanted to contraband these people into the EU (maybe as others do) that was precisely the wrong way to go about it.
We shall see, to our cost, that the EU is a sleeping animal but it is a lion once it is woken up.