A faltering pre-accession strategy

The Nationalists' closer circle knows it had failed and faltered during their negotiations with the EU Commission. This is mostly because in 13 years of talk, and notwithstanding the heavy investments they have made to pipe their big talk about membership, they have failed to draw the necessary investment and, nonetheless, at least the necessary funding to which Malta had been eligible!

This is more evident in the way things were handled by the Nationalists, both in terms of environmental and pre-accession funding issues, ever since they handed in their first application in 1990 and, more so, in recent years following the so-called "reactivation process" in October 1998.

Now the chickens have come home to roost as the Nationalists, just one year away from the presumed accession, face the electorate empty-handed!

There is not even one sign that the Nationalists have even tried to lift a finger to bring the necessary investment in order to maintain, let alone upgrade, our infrastructure - something that Malta needed so much to develop during the 1990s in order to be in a position to face globalisation issues.

But what will possibly remain a mystery is how the Nationalists managed to get away from public scrutiny after all these years and how they had abstained or failed to tap or exploit any funding source to support infrastructure and environment-related projects, at least the funds to which we, as a nation, had been eligible to.

For the taxpayer who had to pay for the millions of liri that the government spent on talks and visits to Brussels, this is scandalous.

All the energy the Nationalists may have had was used on knocking on doors in Brussels.

Their failure is becoming even more evident now that new EU Commission reports shed light on the billions of euros being given to the other candidate countries.

These are being made available to them through Phare, Ispa (Instrument for Structural Policies for Pre-Accession) projects meant to assess the impact of enlargement in border regions, multi-beneficiary programmes and through other direct or indirect pre-accession funding or investment.

Between 2000-2006, the other candidate countries would be getting through Phare alone no less than €11 billion of co-financing for institutional building support through twinning and technical assistance and for investment support to help applicant countries (excluding Malta) in their efforts to pursue membership.

Through Ispa, meant to finance major environmental and transport infrastructure, the Commission has showered the other candidate countries with additional billions of euros in aid.

Ispa alone has an annual budget of €1,040 million. This is not enough.

Moreover, through Sapard, the Special Accession Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development, meant to prepare candidate countries in their implementation of the acquis concerning the Common Agricultural Policy, the other candidate countries will be getting another €520 million per annum.

This shows that the Commission, particularly Günter Verheugen's Directorate-General, Enlargement, is not ready to fork out money for the southerners! Yet, how much money has the government managed to get through Meda?

They have not even built at least one sewage treatment plant or one engineered landfill!

While the Nationalists were enjoying their seat of power, the other candidate countries were emptying every basket they could practically lay their hands on. Even in the Mediterranean context, other non-EU aspiring Mediterranean states had managed to get no fewer than €3.5 billion between 1995 and 1999; another €5 billion were made available from 1999 to date.

What evidence is there to prove that we would be better off with membership when facts show we have already been treated differently from other candidate countries insofar as pre-accession funding is concerned.

To this, one might add the fact that the eastern European candidate countries have been tapping billions of dollars from other financial sources as well. For years these candidate countries had been drawing funds from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Investment Bank as well as from United Nations sources, for example, the UN Human Settlements Division and the Environment for Europe Process through the CIS Fund, the United Nations Development Programme, the Global Environment Facility and the Multilateral Fund.

All that Malta had managed to get during the Nationalist administration were a few thousand dollars for the completion of a CFC country programme and two enabling activities under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

A good part of the blame for this rests with the Nationalist government and its negotiators. All this has led to a crippled economy, with an infrastructure comparable to that of Third World countries.

Mr Mizzi is the Labour Party's main spokesman for the environment