A challenge that all EU members are accepting as being vital for their continent is that Europe must recover its economic competitiveness. A main line of action to achieve this, it's being claimed, is the removal of regulations that are too complicated. They create delays and increase expenses. Especially on the right, the call for the repeal or dilution of regulations introduced in recent years (not least regarding the environment) has become an electoral pledge, projected as an attack against needless bureaucracy.

It is true that "excessive" regulation must be compacted and programmed better. Still by itself, changes on this front cannot be enough to achieve competitiveness. Just as crucial and perhaps more would be a development that brings about an increase in investment in various "strategic" areas. Despite the many speeches expended on this aspect over the years, such investments have dragged. Proposals for the EU to intervene directly with a separate huge fund of its own remained at the proposal stage. There was no agreement as to how, and from where, the money for such a fund would be accumulated.

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ENQUIRIES

Even if it is agreed that there is a strong need for change in how magisterial enquiries can be launched, politically the way by which this message is conveyed carries the utmost importance. Naturally no matter how it's done, the message will not lead to any alteration in the electoral commitment of people who constitute the hard core of the two parties' followers. The strongest impact could be on those Labour voters who have distanced themselves from the party and among those who in the past we called "floaters".

In "selling" the reform, it is not a good idea for high representatives of the government or of the public administration to be portrayed as "victims" who are being persecuted for no reason at all. This is a very risky approach. It bolsters the argument of those who claim that all the government wants to achieve is to ensure impunity and lack of transparency for its favourite acolytes.

Scepticism about how public decisions are being taken has become widespread and has increased greatly, so that it needs to be recognized and faced in a clinical and realistic way. In this scenario, the appearance of manoeuvering regarding the statements of ministers' assets which have not been published, cannot have helped matters.

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NO WAR

Come to think of it, the generations which were born since 1990 or close to that year all have no acquaintance with war. True, incidents of military warfare on a sizable scale (as in former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and the Congo among others) were registered but they all were characterised as "small", regional wars.

In the previous decades, even the generations which came after the end of the Second World War knew about the Korean War, the nuclear confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union, and the Vietenam War, which though it was "regional" in scope threw its shadow across the world.

With the war in the Ukraine, the prospect of generalised war has greatly increased. It doesn't appear that this has caused "much" anxiety in Malta.