Whatever we say, no matter what we pretend, Malta's entry into the EU had to bring in its wake a serious weakening in this country's industrial activity, both relatively and concretely in a number of sectors. Instead of continuing to develop and modernise, they just folded up.

Fortunately this did not happen across the board. Some sectors survived. Slowly they even expanded, though they were no longer branded as "industries". What's important is that they provide scope for the delivery of material goods using technical skills that relate to industrial production.

In this perspective the news that Lufthansa Teknik is expanding its operations in our country was really good news. One could call the work done by the company as a "service" but in reality, it is industrial work that's well adapted to the Maltese environment. One can only hope that the activity will continue to contribute solidly to industrial development.

On another note though: one hopes that the worldwide tariff disruption being caused by the Trump administration in the US will not affect negatively the activity of the most important industrial enterprise here - ST Microelectronics.

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CO-ORDINATION

There's no need for (well paid) reports by specially commissioned technical experts or media stories for the total lack of coordination in private and public works in our streets to come out in the open. It's being done blatantly, in our face and in our daily lives - as I experienced.

The one-way street I was driving through was closed at one end, without any notice of this being given at its other end. The street I could turn to in order to exit - also one-way - was also blocked at its end. Whatever one could do to exit from the situation would be from all sides against the one-way. There was nobody to control this big muddle...

If it were just one occasion one could say, well sometimes things do go wrong. But it wasn't an isolated icident. It's been happening much too often. Possibly it's being done to get us accustomed to the mess in coordinating street closures and ongoing street works.

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EUROPEAN ARMY

If Europeans really want to achieve some strategic autonomy as French President Macron has long been proclaiming and as soon-to-be German Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz seems to agree, they need to consider carefully the logic of what they're discussing. Not least in the miltary context.

The only way by which eventually Europeans could remain credible when they aim for strategic autonomy is by creating a federal army. They're still very far off from such a goal, and this apart from the other fact that investments in equipment, the recruitment of soliders and their training is still very distant from the minimum needed for a European military force to make its presence felt in Europe itself.

The claim has been made that although all this is true, Europe as a separate continental entity must start from somewhere. That is a valid point. The problem is that not everybody agrees with it in the same way and many Europeans contest it, not least because there are "many" who do not wish to give up on their national autonomy.