The Malta Independent 6 June 2025, Friday
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The Brexit effect has started to be felt in Malta – and it’s not good

Thursday, 13 October 2016, 09:40 Last update: about 10 years ago

Whatever the Brexit decision has been doing or will do to Britain is still uncertain. There is a mountain of Theresa May spin in this regard, trying to persuade the British public the referendum decision was undoubtedly the best decision for Britain.

But then there is a very different Brexit impact and it is being felt outside Britain and, more specifically, in Malta.

The first level of impact is being faced by those British who are living in Malta, especially those who are pensioners. They have seen the British pound decreasing and decreasing. Whereas before Brexit they could well survive in Malta with their pension, they are now struggling. Suddenly, they have become markedly poorer. They are having to cut down on what is absolutely not needed and to postpone other decisions that cost money.

The second impact regards those Britishers who would want to holiday in Malta (and elsewhere in Europe). It is well-known that Malta gets a lot of repeat tourists especially from Britain. The British love Malta and feel completely at home here - they have no language problems, they are loved and welcomed. And many have family connections of friends in Malta.

For them and for all others in Britain who would like to have a continental holiday, these have suddenly become more expensive and the Sterling decreases in value coming to be at a par with the euro.

Thirdly, those Maltese who get a British pension are finding their pension (which is paid in Sterling) is suddenly worth less.

There is, of course, an upside to all this - the Maltese who go to Britain are finding their euro can stretch a lot more now.

That is just on the personal level. On a wider level, of course, exports from the UK get cheaper while exports from Malta get dearer. That is the normal impact of different currency rates moving at different speeds. In the long run, if the current trend goes on, British exports will get cheaper but Maltese exports to Britain get dearer.

Ours is too narrow a perspective to judge Brexit objectively. Obviously, the British people will have to be the best judges of the consequences of their choice in June.

Writing in The Guardian, Aditya Chakrabortty wrote about the "the red-faced insistence on one's beliefs despite the mountains of evidence that prove them wrong. Delusional thinking helped tip Britain out of the European Union: the promise of those sunlit uplands of £350m weekly cashback and thousands of trading opportunities. Three months later - even after all the warnings from the European leaders soon to be suing us for alimony, the anxiety from business associations and the repeated broadsides from financial markets - delusional thinking remains rife."

There are still the hard Brexit negotiations to come, once Theresa May presses the Go button. But even now, seen from our perspective, we can see how the Brexit decision has been a disaster, even for us. 
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