Labour deputy leader Alex Agius Saliba has made it clear he will staunchly oppose any attempt to water down Malta’s constitutional neutrality.
“I am not a Labourite because I like the colour red,” the MEP said on Saturday. “Neutrality is more important now than before [when it was first introduced]. I will not mess with certain principles.”
Agius Saliba was asked about his position on neutrality during an appearance on an RTK103 radio show led by academic Andrew Azzopardi.
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Robert Abela said it was time for a “discussion” about the future of Malta’s neutrality and called for Malta to increase its defence spending.
In his comments – given on the fringes of an EU Council meeting in Brussels – Abela implied that he wants Malta to be more flexible in the way it interprets neutrality.
As things stand, Abela said, Malta contributes to several peace initiatives but draws the line when it comes to contributing towards financing lethal weaponry.
“But we cannot adopt a position, as maybe we frequently have, that our country is cut off and completely protected from the realities around us,” he said.
While Abela’s comments were vague, Agius Saliba was much more categorical on Saturday.
“Labour will in no way be weakening neutrality,” Agius Saliba said. “Robert Abela said he wanted ‘discussion’. I would have said ‘discussion to strengthen neutrality’, because that’s what he [Abela] meant.”
But while Agius Saliba said the party would in no way be watering down neutrality, he also acknowledged that the issue had never been raised by Abela in Labour parliamentary group meetings.
Agius Saliba is one of two deputy leaders of the Labour Party. The other, deputy prime minister Ian Borg, has ruled out dropping Malta’s neutrality but as Foreign Affairs Minister has overseen a more vocal Malta on the international scene.
In Saturday’s radio show, the Labour MEP was also confronted with the prime minister’s apparent flip-flop on defence spending.
During the 2022 MEP election campaign, Abela had vocally opposed any increase in defence spending, saying Malta was not interested in “spending more money on weapons”.
Agius Saliba said that statement was made in the context of an EU Commission push for member states to allocate 0.25% of their GDP to a common EU fund to purchase weapons for Ukraine.
Labour was dead-set against that idea, he said, but saw value in spending more on domestic defence, including cybersecurity.
Nationalist Party secretary general Michael Piccinino, who was also a guest on the radio show, said Abela had been exposed as a hypocrite.
“We’ve been saying what Abela is now saying for a long time. But before the elections, Robert Abela painted Roberta Metsola as almost genocidal. And now he’s agreeing with her. At least Alex [Agius Saliba] remained consistent in his position."