The challenge facing Malta has hardly changed. What should be done to keep our islands economically viable while ensuring good living and social conditions for citizens?

Since Independence, we’ve been finding off and on correct responses to the challenge, while discarding emigration as a tool of policy.

Today, many believe that the challenge has been overcome once for all, especially as current results are turning out to be so good. That would be an illusion.

Past experience demonstrates how quickly the circumstances which allow us to develop the activities that provide us with a livelihood can change – for the better or for the worse.

So, while “enjoying” the benefits of today’s successes, we should prepare for what we’ll need instead to carry the successes forward.

Thirty years ago, nobody could have foreseen that financial services would become as significant in the economy as they have done. It’s in our interest as of now to start querying seriously what could eventually replace them.

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Dispossessed

Given that economic woes are largely absent, the major point of criticism and attack available to the Nationalist Opposition relates to issues of governance. As the Prime Minister himself admitted, scope for such criticism exists.

Some say that even so, the Opposition still has a problem with this approach. When it faces internal problems, it does not practise the values it proclaims. Therefore, it cannot be given credence.

And yet I feel that the Opposition has a much deeper problem in this area. Not necessarily regarding what it says, as much as in the way by which it says what it says.

In their expressions and actions, PN leaders give overall the impression that in reality, what really bugs them most is the fact that they are not running the country. From their perspective, they should have been and should be in charge of the country, yesterday, today and for ever, as if by some divine right. Thus, they fail to project themselves as reformers; indeed they come across as members of a dispossessed establishment. That makes their critical remarks about governance sound more like fluff than substance. 

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Banking Union

Had it not happened – perhaps on purpose – during the end of the year holiday, it would have generated a huge fuss. The rescue by the Italian government of the Monte Paschi bank demonstrates the persisting fragility of the process by which the euro zone is trying to reinforce its protective systems.

Supposedly, a banking union is under construction, by which European banks that have so-called systemic significance are held under ongoing surveillance. When big financial problems arise, they have to follow given rules, as a Europe-wide authority assesses whether they should be bailed out or not. In this way, the belief that some banks are too important, too “big”, to be allowed to fail, and that governments need to fork out billions to keep them afloat, would die a natural death.

Well, the idea is still alive and kicking. There is consensus that no other alternative existed. The Italian government had to bail out Monte Paschi.

First of all, have come explanations that underline how too many banks carry too many non-performing loans. Yes, that is a problem.

A bigger one though is that in a situation where economies are still underperforming, European governments still have not agreed about the endpoint of the banking union, and how soon they want to reach it. Their first priority has been, still is, to safeguard their own national interest.