Gozo, Malta and Europe

Abstract

In this presentation, I would like to range wider than simply discussing the impact on Gozo of the projected European Union membership. The impression being fostered among us is that there is no alternative to E.U. membership and that therefore, we should all seek to put ourselves into that scenario. It is a self-serving impression, spread by those who would not like the implications of full membership to be thoroughly appraised. Still, it is increasingly being understood by most people that full E.U. membership will mean for Malta - and for Gozo - the total application of the EU's Acquis, that is, the European Union's body of rules and regulations. These apply regardless of where you are on the European continent - for industry and trade, for agriculture and fisheries as well as their allied processing sectors, for taxes and finance, for transport and the environment, for business regulation and social policy, for the establishment of citizens and businesses across national boundaries, for hunting and the purchase of property. Such application will be even more stringent and peremptory in those areas of the EU's rules and policies that guide the functioning of a common market in goods and services, including finance. While it is being drummed into people's minds that they had better accept it or lump it - arguing that there is no other way out but by becoming a member of the E.U. -the not so attractive features of full membership are being fudged. By contrast, the presumed positive impacts are being emphasized. On close consideration, these are revealed as being presumed access to huge structural funds by which roads, hospitals and factories will be supposedly built from the ground up, using E.U. grants. To be sure, scepticism over such claims has grown recently, following the promise made in the summer of 1998. Then, we were told that if Malta reactivated its application to join the EU, it immediately stood to gain Lm100 million a year. Now we know that was just election driven fantasy, or worse.