Maastricht criteria cost Malta dearly, delegates told

The government's rush to meet the Maastricht criteria produced some short-term financial successes but it all came at a great social and economic cost, Labour's acting leader Charles Mangion said yesterday.

Dr Mangion, along with George Vella, the party's spokesman on European affairs, was addressing a meeting of the European Socialists' Group (PES) in Malta.

Both said they were optimistic that Labour would win the forthcoming general election, premising their confidence on the need to change the present Administration characterised by "large-scale waste, corruption, nepotism and mismanagement of public funds," in Dr Vella's words.

People's standard of living, Dr Mangion said, dropped between 2002 and 2007, adding that Eurostat predicts a further decline during 2008. While GDP per capita was 79.9 per cent of the EU average in 2002, it went down to 76.3 per cent in 2007 and is expected to fall to 75.9 per cent this year.

"This is just one indicator which shows how badly this country needs to change course to guarantee its citizens a better quality of life," he said.

On the same lines, he said the country was lagging behind in terms of its Lisbon Agenda indicators and also in education.

"The Labour Party is taking the flashing of these red lights very seriously and we are determined to tackle this gross under-achievement," he insisted.

The government, while increasing the tax burden over the years, had squandered precious resources through mismanagement of public funds, which, he said, is one of the issues a new Labour government would have to tackle most urgently.

"At the same time we will build in checks in our systems of public expenditure to ensure that waste and abuse of public funds is controlled and that taxpayers get full value for every euro of public funds which is spent by the government in recurrent or capital expenditure," Dr Mangion said.