The Labour Party’s crusade against European Union membership for Malta was mostly based on its claim that Malta would lose its identity if it joined.
Leader at the time Alfred Sant and all who followed him, including the then aspiring politician Joseph Muscat, repeated ad nauseam that Malta would be giving up all that made us Maltese if it got that seat in Brussels.
They tried their hardest to leave us out and deprive us of the chance to be part of the bloc, finding every possible excuse and trying to instil the fear of invasion and illness. Most of all, they said we would be losing our identity.
Incidentally, after losing the battle, Joseph Muscat went on to become a Member of the European Parliament with all its privileges and now Alfred Sant wants to follow suit.
How things change.
By becoming members of the EU, Malta and the Maltese did not lose their identity. And now it is the Labour government, spearheaded by Joseph Muscat, which stubbornly wants to sell it to all those with the means to buy it – simply because a Maltese identity is now also a European identity. Nobody would want to buy a Maltese passport had Malta not been part of Europe.
This hard-headedness is leading the Maltese government into a head-on clash with the EU. We all heard what European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Viviane Reding had to say about Labour’s plan. Malta is breaking European and international law. Citizenship should not be up for sale. We cannot put a price tag on citizenship. Harsh words indeed, but Labour has chosen to plough on.
Malta now risks facing infringement proceedings. These may take a long time to be concluded, by which time Joseph Muscat will have probably managed to sell his 1,800 passports (plus relatives and friends). But Malta’s reputation is now in the gutter. What has been painstakingly built in the first nine years of membership has been shot down in 10 months. How can Malta’s Prime Minister now be taken seriously and expect some kind of backing in other EU matters – most notably migration – when he chooses to ignore the warning signs and the EP vote?
The government’s passport-selling scheme was rejected by 90 per cent of the European Parliamentarians, including most members of the socialist group of which the Labour Party forms part. In spite of the harsh lobbying that was instituted by Labour on the eve of the vote, there was no way that they could sway the vote in their favour. That only 22 of 626 MEPs, including the four Labour representatives, supported the Maltese government’s stand goes a long way to explaining the general feeling of outright disdain against the scheme.
The result is a victory for righteousness, but it is certainly a humiliation for Malta. What is wrong is wrong, no matter how nicely it is wrapped up.
The Labour government has had its chances to alter the scheme to make it acceptable. Right from the start, the Nationalist Opposition made it clear that what Labour was proposing was an outright sale of citizenship. The public at large, except those with red blinkers, realised the damage that such a scheme could cause and only those who stood to gain from it spoke up in its favour.
When Joseph Muscat, in late November and after the amendments to the law had already been passed in Parliament, said the government was ready to re-open negotiations in search of an agreement, there was hope that Labour had seen reason. But long hours of talks with the Opposition led nowhere, as Labour wanted to retain the concept of sale. Announcing that buying a passport would become more expensive than originally thought did not change the fact that the government wants to sell Maltese citizenship to make a quick buck.
The Labour government is blaming the Nationalist Party for working against the citizenship scheme (I know it is called the Individual Investor Programme, but I find it hard to refer to it by its proper name because it really does not fit) but it should be blaming itself for coming up with an idea that was bound to cause repercussions, given that citizenship is not something that one could play with, particularly because in this case Maltese citizenship is also European.
It is the scheme that is wrong, not the people who are criticising it and trying to stop it.
Labour has lost big time on this issue. For one thing, the scheme was not mentioned in its electoral programme, and some people are feeling betrayed by the party for which they voted. Secondly, discussion about the scheme will not go away easily. There will always be questions about how many have applied, who they are and how are they using the passport they bought. And there is always a risk that Malta will be in the news for the wrong reasons because of this scheme.
It might be too early to say it, but my reading of it is that the citizenship scheme could turn out to be the issue that initiates Labour’s downfall. Just as much as, in the previous legislature, the honoraria debate haunted the Nationalist government and strongly contributed towards its election defeat, so could the citizenship issue become Labour’s Achilles Heel.
The Nationalist government could never dispel the belief that its ministers gave themselves a pay rise and kept it secret. They tried to find ways to defend themselves but anything they said could never be convincing enough.
Now it is Labour’s turn to have to always be on the defensive, but no matter how hard it will try to stick to its guns, the citizenship scheme is not justifiable – whichever way one looks at it. What is worse is that, whereas the honoraria debate was a national affair, the citizenship debate has put Malta in bad light on the international stage as well.
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