The government was making grand promises about quality and prosperity but was ultimately failing to deliver, Opposition leader Bernard Grech said on Monday in his first reaction to Budget 2025. 

This, he said, was a budget to save the prime minister's skin after the result of the June elections and subsequent opinion polls.

He voiced concerns over several measures announced by the finance minister, which he said would burden rather than benefit the people. 

“This is a government that claims to give much but takes even more. It gives with one hand and takes with the other," Grech said. 

In particular, he criticised a new measure raising the number of years of social security contributions needed for pension purposes to 42 years for those born in 1976 and later.

This measure, he said, contradicted the government’s previous claims that the future of pensions was being guaranteed by population growth through foreign labour.

The government’s policies had increased the population and brought about pressures on the infrastructure, without delivering the promised stability.

"The government promised us peace of mind for pensions, but instead, it grew the population and sacrificed our quality of life."

Despite this, he said, Budget projections, particularly for growth in social security contributions, indicated that in 2025 the government would increase foreign labour by a further 40,000.

The government, he said, had ignored calls by the trade unions not to continue to tax the cost of living adjustment.

This was a government which, after having doubled the national debt to €10 billion had said it needed to borrow three billion euro more.     

And instead of spending more to tackle infrastructural problems caused by population growth, it was reducing spending by €40 million.

Grech acknowledged the widening of the tax brackets as positive but said that they fell short of his party’s expectations and said a PN government would do better.

'Tax cuts fell short of our expectations,' said Bernard Grech. Photo. Jonathan Borg.

The Nationalist Party had already said that it would reduce personal and corporate tax, he recalled, with the top rate lowered from 35% to 25% for the former. 

In the latter case, companies with profits up to the first half-million euros would see their tax lowered to 15 percent provided they met a PN government’s targets for environmental sustainability, social responsibilities, and fiscal duties.

Grech said he wanted to lead an honest government that grew the economy and improved the quality of life, not one full of empty words and fairy tales like the current labour government.

Asked whether he could confirm that the Nationalist Party had accepted donations from Tal-Franciz, the developer involved in the Villa Rosa project, Grech skirted the question but reiterated that the opposition could not accept a piecemeal review of the local plans, as the government was planning. 

"The review of local plans must respect everyone and not just benefit one developer or another," he said.

"We need to discuss party financing openly. Our country should have proper legislation for party financing, as well as better and proper salaries for politicians to dispel any doubt about government yielding to the demands of donors."