Editorial

Pat Cox, the Irishman elected to preside over the European Parliament last January, had a forthright message for the people of these islands, which he visited last week: seize the moment, he told the House of Representatives on Tuesday morning, referring to Malta`s current negotiations to join the European Union.

Correctly stressing that the choice was for the Maltese people to make, and for nobody else, Mr Cox expressed his conviction that EU membership was a golden opportunity and that this small island-nation would make a success of it, as his own country, Ireland, had done.

Indeed, there are so many similarities between Malta and Ireland that one is bound to see how Ireland has performed since it joined to EU for guidance as to how Malta could fare once it, too, joined.

As it so happens, Ireland is due to assume the presidency of the European Union in January 2004, by which time Malta and nine other candidate countries should be ready to join in what would be the largest ever enlargement of the Union since its foundation in 1957.

Describing Ireland`s membership of the EU in 1973 as its second "act of Irish liberation" (after the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922), Mr Cox went on to list the enormous benefits his country had derived since then.

Malta, like Ireland, is an island steeped in a strong Catholic tradition; both countries tried to overcome their serious economic problems by resorting to mass emigration in the past; and both are "on the periphery" of Europe.

On this last point Mr Cox said that, in Ireland`s case, some had feared that in the EU, "all resources and wealth were sucked into the centre, and the periphery would simply supply the labour force for the rich centre." But, he stressed, the contrary was the case. In fact, he noted, all the member countries "on the periphery" of the Union had thrived: Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Greece... They had all shown a dramatically greater capacity for growth than the centre.

The message could not be clearer. Malta, despite all the Opposition`s scaremongering, would thrive in the EU. The stimulus to its economic, and especially industrial, potential would be enormous, as in Ireland`s case. This opinion is shared by European Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy, as he told The Sunday Times in an interview being carried in this issue.

From 1973, the year it joined, to the present, Irish exports to the EU shot up from five billion euros` worth to 82.5 billion euros. There is no reason why Maltese exports should not follow the same trajectory; after all, they would have free and unfettered access to a market set to grow to 400 million consumers by 2004.

There was another aspect to this "periphery" business. It is Dr Sant`s publicly expressed conviction that Malta in the EU, because of its status as an "outpost" at the southernmost flank of the Mediterranean, would be perceived as a threat by North African states.

Mr Cox, at his meeting with Dr Sant, quickly shot down this perception. "A threat to whom?", he asked the MLP leader, "This is part of your imagination". Mr Cox added that he hoped that the EU is not seen as a threat to any part of the Mediterranean. On the contrary, the EU was contributing to peace in the region, particularly through its Euro-Mediterranean Process which sought to bring together EU and non-EU Mediterranean states in one huge free trade area by 2010.

Mr Cox, of course, could not resist a dig at the MLP`s refusal to be bound by the result of a straightforward electoral consultation - to wit, a referendum - on EU membership, in view of the Opposition`s "Switzerland in the Mediterranean" slogan (admittedly now being discarded in favour of "partnership with the EU"). How could one not believe in the validity of a referendum when it was the very essence of Swiss democracy to do so?

But, in the end, as Mr Cox said, the choice facing the Maltese people amounted to this: Do we want to participate in the EU`s decision-making process? Do we want to be at the table of the European Commission? Do we want to be at the table of the Council of Ministers? Do we want to actively participate in the European Parliament?

Answering "no" to these questions means cutting ourselves off from taking part in decisions which will increasingly affect our future, whether we join or not. With 11 other countries on cue to join, the cost of staying out will be definitely much higher. By the time we`d realise our mistake, it would take a generation, at least, to remedy it. The choice, as Mr Cox underlined, is ours alone.