The Malta Independent 10 February 2025, Monday
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An overload of social obligations?

Alfred Sant Monday, 13 January 2025, 07:48 Last update: about 28 days ago

There came curious reactions from the US Congress to the idea put forward by President-elect Trump for the countries of the West to increase their expenditures on military defence to 5 per cent of GDP. (Not even the US is reaching this level and is actually well below it.)

Members of Congress understood Trump's proposal as another warning to European states to be prepared to pay much more in order to defend their interests, and not continue to waste their resources on social payments and commitments.

Much as I admire the US (politically from a Democratic Party perspective) and much as I criticise the EU for being a federalist construction that forces through one size fits all solutions, I have no doubt that the EU's main achievement (which the US has not gotten round to implement) lies precisely in the consensus it has achieved among its major political movements for a unity that puts social solidarity as a basic leading priority. One prays that this priority will not be allowed to fade in the name of a revival of militarism.

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A MINISTRY FOR GOZO

Media stories recently made a strange claim about how the Gozo ministry has become too powerful. It would be interesting to investigate what gave rise to such a claim. Indeed, it is true that from the local Gozitan perspective, the person responsible for the ministry enjoys clear power of political patronage and control over the running of some ongoing infrastructural works.

However the reality is that over the years, the Gozo ministry has run mostly as a glorified local council. It has been less than effective in setting Gozo's strategic objectives which was done from Malta, apart perhaps from the adoption of political buzz words and slogans.

Strategic choices were all either fudged or remained pending. So: one could see the seesawing of decisions in the sectors of public transport, by sea and by air. The pending decision about where to resite the law courts. The ongoing confusion about how to rationalise school buildings in Gozo. The Chambrai debacle. The ever growing percentage of agricultural land that is being abandoned. The almost total destruction in the wake of Malta's EU membership of industry in Gozo, which had always been fragile. The failure of proposals to convert Gozo into a tourist destination, separate  from Malta. Meanwhile, infrastructural spending remained weak, except for some bizarre cases.

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POLICY FOR TCNS

The proposals being advanced by the government for new regulations covering how foreign workers coming from outside the EU (TCNs) must be employed, are reasonable, practical and give evidence of a full respect for social justice; the latter with regard to foreign workers who frequently do not find adequate protection from massive exploitation. To make matters worse, many Maltese citizens blame them for the thousand everyday problems they encounter (when TCNs have got nothing to do with them).

One can only hope that in the coming weeks, what the government is proposing, supplemented by any positive suggestions that it would have received from the public will come into force and be implemented across the board.


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