Ecstatic about membership!

While watching a programme on Smash TV hosted by Malta Today editor Saviour Balzan recently, I heard Joanna Drake - a protagonist in the Yes camp during the referendum campaign - boast that we are already tasting the success of membership. To prove her point she mentioned the fact that there are people who are seeking or have taken up jobs abroad as well as the removal of the tax on satellite dishes (!) and the removal of the levies.

On her supposed plus point of membership - that of people seeking or going abroad to work - may I first remind Dr Drake that she and her colleagues had done their best to impress that with EU membership a procession of foreign investors would be coming to Malta, thus creating many job opportunities here, not abroad! If to go and work abroad is something that we should be proud of, then the 1960s was the proudest period of all since over 47,000 of our people had to go abroad in order to live! Of course, if Dr Drake had in mind those few hundreds who have been offered jobs in Brussels, Luxembourg etc. related to EU membership, then that is another matter altogether.

On the removal of the levies Dr Drake knows that as a result of that our government has lost millions of liri in revenue. Not only that, but then had to start forking out millions of liri in subsidies to farmers to cushion somewhat the negative effect on their earnings which the removal of the levies would bring about, besides other subsidies to keep prices of essential food items from skyrocketing immediately.

To make up for all this lost revenue and subsidies it is paying out, the government increased VAT from 15 to 18 per cent. Dr Drake forgot all about that! It has also been forced to introduce VAT on around 400 goods and services on which we did not pay any VAT at all before May 1, 2004. These include certain medicinal items and equipment, educational material and certain food items.

All this thanks to EU membership. Again, not a word about this from Dr Drake, the avid campaigner. The eco tax and energy tax also did not feature in Dr Drake's list of "EU benefits". But rest assured that once we get the new EU passport and start using the euro currency she and her Eurocrat colleagues will again become ecstatic about Malta's membership and will wish that all of us too share with them their ecstasy, even if we will be paying for it through our nose.