In light of current developments, EU structures are being expanded to include functions covering extensive operations in the field of security and defence. If these functions are to really prove effective, they will eventually need to become federal in scope.

Some will argue that the same claims used to be made when the eurozone was taking shape. Yet, eurozone structures continued to develop on their own steam. As of now, the zone is not run on a federal basis but according to the different gameplans developed by the Union.

Even so, there is a substantial difference between the management of a common currency for a continent, and the administration of a continental security and defence policy. The latter requires commitments of manpower and of infrastructural investment tied to the production and procurement of weapons and war equipment, that are all firmly bound together by some strategic military doctrine. We are very distant from such an outcome yet, but logically it's the endpoint that has to be attained.

However, it's been an enormous mistake to have gone for this development from within EU structures. It should have been designed and implemented from within a European Defence Union, distinct from the EU if parallel to it, on the model of what was attempted in the early 1950's.

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WAR CALCULATIONS

In the calculations now being carried out by the US and Israel, as well as by Iran, one factor seems to be given least importance: the death of people. All sides appear to be downscaling the reality of the deaths that occur among their ranks, and in reality are not at all concerned about the deaths they cause to the other side. So we hear "from a distance" about Israeli and US deaths, and almost nothing about those in Iran and elsewhere, even if they're "negligible" in number for the former, while for the latter, they're in their hundreds and thousands-mostly civilians.

As conflicts occur in apparently a greater number, the main propaganda calculations regarding the ups and downs of war focus on the few deaths recorded by your side, and more casually on the many, many deaths inflicted on the enemy.

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SALES AND DISTRIBUTION

The so-called retail sector has modernised extensively and changed structurally to the extent it is hardly reognizable from how it used to be not so long ago. Yet, one still notes how at points of sale, insufficient attention is still being given by sellers to consumer preferences. When a product line is quickly taken up, instead of releasing more of it, some similar but different item gets pushed onto display shelves (say green instead of blue). It is kept on display even when buyers clearly show less interest in green.

Perhaps this happens because sellers or distributors are committed to clear fixed sales volumes of blue and green. Till they've cleared all their stocks of green, they're not organised to order more blue. Or perhaps, given the size limitations of the Maltese market, it is not possible to increase fast enough the supply of blue. Whatever the reason, whenever consumer demand is not met, as and when it emerges, the impression remains that consumers do not really enjoy the freedom of choice.