MHRA defends reports on EU membership impact

The Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association is to present its conclusive EU reports to the political parties this morning "to prove it has nothing to hide".

The MHRA council yesterday said it was surprised at a statement made by opposition leader Alfred Sant who implied that the association was keeping the reports under wraps.

At a mass meeting on Sunday, Dr Sant criticised the MHRA for not giving the MLP a copy of its reports.

But the MHRA yesterday said that a detailed printout of the presentations, given during the MHRA conference last week, was in fact passed to the Labour Party last Friday on request.

The presentations contained a full, detailed synopsis of all the reports. The association had also made it clear that the reports will be available for viewing at its offices for anyone who wanted to verify their credibility.

During a one-day 'Decision Time' conference last Tuesday, the MHRA published three studies which concluded that Malta could potentially lose up to a staggering 19.5 per cent of its tourism revenue if it remained out of the EU.

The MHRA, however, also showed the potential downsides of membership and also examined various scenarios of non-membership.

The final three reports were part of a professional and detailed process carried out by the association for its members. Moreover, the survey results among MHRA members were more than conclusive, with only one per cent voting against membership.

The reports will be forwarded to the Labour Party, the Nationalist Party and Alternattiva this morning.

In comments to The Times, the MHRA council defended the credibility of the reports.

"The reports were drawn up by four professionals and the whole process was dealt with in an objective and unbiased way. The whole process was overseen by the MHRA's EU consultant who met bi-weekly with the team that put the reports together.

"The reports highlight both the positive and negative aspects of membership, and it's not in our interest to hide anything," the council said.

"On the contrary, our objective was to show our membership the full picture without any political bias."

The reports were commissioned to the firm EuropAdvise last August with specific terms of reference, and drawn up by Dr Gabriella Pace, Prof. Lino Briguglio, Gordon Cordina and Adrian Borg.

MHRA president Winston Zahra said the council sincerely hoped that the reports would not be used for partisan purposes.

The MHRA has been working towards a decision on the EU for over four years, under five councils, and three different presidents, he said.

"It's a very sad situation to see an association like ours, which carries out its work in a professional manner for the benefit of its members and the tourism industry, to be used for political gain.

"In our reports we took a detailed, objective approach to the overall analysis. We presented the reports in their entirety to our members last week and we have received excellent feedback from our members about the way the whole issue was handled."

At the end of the day, Mr Zahra said, it was the MHRA's members, who represent Lm450 million worth of local investment and employ over 7,500 employees, who voted in a professionally managed survey.