Jeremy Boissevain was the first to explain how to a substantial extent, affairs are conducted in Malta according to a friends-of-friends system, with "friends" working together to help each other attain their objectives. One doubts whether this applies uniquely to Maltese society. It probably holds for all small scale traditional societies.

The arrangement has its upside and downside. Certainly, when competing with outside institutions and interests much larger than they are, the members of such societies need to work in tandem with each other if they are going to get anywhere.

The problem is that friends-of-friends dealings happen too, in a big way, within traditional society when its own members compete with each other. Hidden loyalties come into play which do not always respect legality. Above all, hidden rules are followed and they end up reinforcing social inequalities, that go beyond the damage caused by the prospect of active or potential corruption.

Given this state of affairs, I always felt sceptical as to whether measures introduced to control abuses can be fully effective.

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Islands

Much still needs to be done to ensure widespread acceptance of the fact that islands face different and tougher challenges in developing economically than do other regions. This is especially the case if like Malta and Cyprus, they are situated at the periphery of the zone of which they form part.

Up to now, the European Union has argued that in order to compensate for the disadvantages from which islands and peripheral zones suffer, it is sufficient to allocate extra monies to them from European funds earmarked for "structural" and "cohesion" objectives. In fact, credits of this sort were opened, also to the benefit of Malta.

However I do not think that to overcome the disadvantages which islands have to bear, simply increasing project funds will do. What needs to be done is to establish the conditions under which an island’s firms can compete with those of larger countries, by way of achieving comparable production costs.

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Spring

Since with my MEP comrades I started travelling to Brussels or Strasbourg practically every week, I could observe how the seasons in the south undergo changes that are different to those of "northern" Europe. It's not just a question of how dawn and dusk emerge at different moments of the day. Sometimes it's in the north that daylight remains with you, sometimes in the south. Neither is it just a question of how spring remains cool in the north when in Malta it's already turning to be like summer.

For in addition, one can actually see how in Malta and Brussels, plants, flowers and trees are developing at different rates. Here, winter greens quickly change into a display of colours, mostly yellow. Meanwhile, initially everything there would be bare or charged with the green of grass. When things start getting dry in Malta, flowers and all sorts of colours would be emerging there.

One comes to the conclusion that spring and autumn do not have the same meaning from one side of Europe to the other.