Malta is set to renew its Partnership for Peace membership over the coming months, with negotiations under way between the government and NATO to determine the areas of cooperation in which Malta will be involved.
The negotiations are taking place with the consensus of the opposition, which expressed its support for the agreement’s renewal, following a presentation by Foreign Minister Ian Borg at the Foreign & EU Affairs parliamentary committee.
Malta’s previous agreement expired at the end of May. The new agreement is due to be signed by the end of September.
Speaking at the parliamentary committee, Borg sought to assuage concerns over the programme’s impact on Malta’s neutrality, pointing to the participation of other neutral countries such as Ireland, Austria and Switzerland.
Borg also presented advice from the state advocate saying that Malta’s participation in the programme is in line with its constitutional stance on neutrality.
The minister pledged to return to the committee to present the outcome of negotiations before the renewal agreement is signed.
PfP is a NATO programme established in 1994 with the declared aim “to increase stability, diminish threats to peace and build strengthened security relationships” between NATO members and other countries across the Euro-Atlantic area.
The programme was initially devised in response to the collapse of the Soviet Union, with NATO looking to expand to include countries that were signatories to the Warsaw Pact, a defence treaty between the Soviet Union and several other central and Eastern European states.
The programme sees NATO developing bilateral agreements with PfP partners across several areas of cooperation, including defence, peacekeeping, counter-terrorism and energy security, among others. Partner countries choose their preferred areas for collaboration following negotiations with NATO and are not obliged to participate in NATO’s military activities.
The PfP lists 34 members, several of which later went on to become fully-fledged members of NATO.
Membership once controversial
Malta’s membership in the Partnership for Peace has long courted controversy, with Malta’s two main parties initially adopting opposing stances over the issue.
Malta first joined the Partnership for Peace programme in 1995, only for this to be withdrawn a year later upon Labour’s electoral victory in 1996.
The Labour Party vehemently opposed Malta’s involvement in the programme, claiming it breached Malta’s constitutional neutrality and non-alignment clauses.
Malta eventually rejoined the PfP in the aftermath of the PN’s narrow 2008 electoral victory, despite the issue neither being in the party’s electoral manifesto nor discussed in parliament.
The Labour Party vehemently opposed Malta’s involvement in the programme
Critics argued that the government of the day took advantage of a rudderless opposition, with the Labour Party in transition following the resignation of Alfred Sant as party leader, to reintroduce Malta’s membership by stealth.
The issue of PfP eventually cost Richard Cachia Caruana his job as Malta’s permanent representative to the EU, after he lost a parliamentary motion claiming that he negotiated Malta’s re-entry to the programme behind parliament’s back.
The Labour Party later changed tack on PfP membership, declaring in 2011 that the party would not withdraw from the alliance once elected to government.