The recent cabinet reshuffle and the government’s motives behind it must be analysed with reference to its utility or otherwise in delivering results on the challenges ahead. Public judgement on the cabinet and individual components therein will be made in time.
At this stage I will simply share two examples where the Prime Minister’s choices seem to be grounded more in short-term political expediency than in an authentic will to address the said challenges.
The first is the Ministry of Agriculture, an area which has seen Maltese and Gozitan farmers losing market to foreign imports now eating up 70 per cent of our consumption. There is nothing wrong with importation; it is rather the hallmark of free movement. The worrying aspect of the current situation is the government’s failure to use any of the tools available to sustain local production to compete in the free market. For instance, most of our imported product comes from Italy and Spain where local farmers get subsidies on their energy consumption.
Just 60 miles north of Qala in the valley of Modica, farmers buy their fuel at roughly half the price paid by Maltese farmers. The European Union allows fuel subsidies to farmers, which are actually the norm in most member states. Yet, it was considered a bureaucratic nuisance for Maltese government.
Maltese farmers are subject to a sort of dumping of foreign products with no anti-dumping solace in sight. Another obvious disadvantage is the lack of any insurance support for farming investment.
Again, in Sicily and in virtually all the continent, farmers can insure their crops and their structures against weather and other accidents. Maltese farmers will not find insurance cover for their investment, and yet EU rules expressly foresee government intervention to cover up to 35 per cent of costs for insurance cover. A call by the government to identify interested insurers got no replies. The lobbying there was evidently less intensive than in other quarters.
This not to mention the promised assistance for flood damage sustained in February 2019 which was followed by press conferences and tweets by no less than five Labour protagonists. Can you guess the amount of money received by farmers a year on? You guessed it, it’s zero.
We seem to be missing out in tapping the new areas where the Union is putting its money
In this context, farmers and lovers of the Maltese product were expecting a strong signal from Prime Minister Robert Abela.
The appearance of it was good at first, promoting the role to a ministry, but then reality caught up; once the Gozo ministry became vacant, agriculture became Cinderella once more and the role went to Minister Anton Refalo who reportedly refused that same portfolio offered by Joseph Muscat three years earlier.
Different area, same attitude. The portfolio for European Affairs and EU funds is right now probably the most critical assignment for our economy in the medium to longer term. Suffice it to say that Lawrence Gonzi’s package of EU funds secured seven years ago is the source of roughly 17 per cent of our economy right now. This figure is not my invention but the finding of a recent study on the effect of EU funding in new member states.
The efforts of that Gonzi administration built on years of preparation and targeted lobbying based, above all, on stability of policy and that of the main actors representing it. Not so for the present government.
Imagine you are going to war (EU negotiations on money are not far from that in intensity) and you change your commander three times and your best general three times over again. That is what happened to the Ministry of European Affairs and the Parliamentary Secretary for EU funding. We had Helena Dalli and then Edward Zammit Lewis, then Evarist Bartolo and then Ian Borg, Aaron Farrugia and Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi. The joke in the ministry is that by the time they hang up the photo of the boss, they need to take a shot of the next one.
The sombre effect of this may be assessed once we know the outcome of government’s efforts in securing Malta’s allocation out of the €1.1 trillion EU long-term budget for 2021-2027.
What is clear so far is that we seem to be missing out in tapping the new areas where the Union is putting its money. A look at the proposed Commission draft clearly calls for sustained efforts to build Maltese capacity in attracting research and development investment to our shores, where we rank third from last at present. We also need a more organic drive for investment in digitalisation where we need to be able to develop the start-ups and the technology rather than importing it lock, stock and barrel with the lure of an attractive tax regime.
Let us hope that the government wakes up to the opportunity in front of it and manages to go beyond the musical chairs of personas and districts and instead takes aim at delivering results for the sake of Maltese society as a whole.
If we judge Abela’s efforts by the two cases above alone, it would seem that his tenure will not be much different from that of his predecessor, where image overruled substance to the detriment of the many expecting solutions to their problems. From our end, we will make sure that those in charge are held accountable to the missed opportunities for Malta.
Peter Agius was a former head of the European Parliament in Malta and a former PN MEP candidate.