Malta’s cliff hanger election : epilogue or a turning point?

Abstract

The 2008 election in Malta, the EU’s smallest member state was fought on many issues most of which focused on the incumbent Nationalist Party’s (NP) long stretch in office. The Nationalist Party has been in government since 1987 except for a brief spell between 1996 and 1998. Generally speaking the EU did not command the same level of attention as it had done in past elections. In the 2008 campaign the Malta Labor Party (MLP) proposed reopening negotiations with the EU on some aspects of the ’membership package’ in the Accession Treaty signed between the EU and the new member states in Athens in 2003. Another EU-related issue revolved around the future of hunting in Malta. This article will not analyse at length this issue, which in any case is still sub judice but will focus more on the other salient points of the campaign, the peculiarities of the Maltese electoral system, Malta’s membership of the Partnership for Peace (PfP) which was one of the most important outcomes of this election and the main impact of this election on Malta and the EU.