One feels that in a real sense, the government budget is no longer considered as central in the island’s political affairs. That was an objective set out by the Fenech Adami administration some years ago. However, several other factors contributed to make it happen.

EU membership decreased greatly the margins within which government finances could be used to affect the economic climate. Meanwhile, government’s own direct participation in ongoing activity declined, not only because its economic footprint no longer spread at its former rate, but also because the whole economy became massively dependent on services. Moreover, liberalisation and the introduction of free movement of capital implied that budgetary decisions would have less of an impact on economic performance.

Perhaps an exception to this could be in the sector of government employment and the way by which public jobs are multiplied or curtailed. Perhaps; yet such movements rarely get announced at budget time. They are not determined by one-off decisions, but follow from incremental  additions to the public workforce, or more rarely – reductions, which happen during the year, quite frequently for “political” reasons. 

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Divergences

The divergences that seem to be growing between EU member states are not just political in nature.

They also relate to economic issues though sometimes in the end, what is economic dovetails into the political. Italian Prime Minister Renzi provided the most recent example of this when he made it clear he would not allow the European Commission to interfere in how he would be drawing up his government’s budget. After all, the Commission had allowed – according to him – Germany to contravene eurozone rules by continuing to run trade and budgetary surpluses.

Economic divergences between the centre and north, and the south of Europe are deepening. The same is happening with the “eastern” countries of the Visegrad group.

Economic and social conditions in the different regions are too disparate. Quite likely, the implementation of the same management rules for all European areas, as per the Stability and Growth Pact, is serving to reinforce disparities, rather than bridge them.

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Flashback

I read and heard about the legal arguments claiming how the manner by which members of the judiciary will be “disciplined”, even now following the recent amendments to the relative law, goes against the principles of transparency and “natural” justice. It was difficult not to smile when I got to know about this. As in a flasback, these claims reminded me of what happened years ago when the Nationalist government wanted to impeach Judge Depasquale, on the grounds that he was failing to attend at court.

I then argued that independently of the validity or otherwise of the allegations against the judge, the procedure being followed to impeach him was at fault. The same individuals were taking on the roles of prosecution, jury and judge all at the same time regarding the accusations being made.  I was accused of just being negative, saying no for the sake of saying no. As far as I can remember, nobody else reacted similarly.

Times change.