Sant insists debate on EU should remain internal

Labour Party leader Alfred Sant said yesterday the party would have a full discussion on the policies it should adopt about the EU but this discussion should remain internal.

Speaking at the annual meeting of the Valletta MLP committee yesterday, Dr Sant said the MLP was working internally to understand the two choices it faced - either for Malta to leave the EU or to see how Malta could make progress within the European Union.

Dr Sant said he could not agree with the option of taking Malta out of the EU, as proposed by Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, since this option would fuel uncertainty and foster economic uncertainty, from which the workers would be the most to suffer. The party's executive and the parliamentary group were therefore not recommending this course.

Dr Sant said the MLP also agreed that it could not simply bow its head to everything that the Fenech Adami government had negotiated with the EU and the best option was for the party to cushion the disadvantages of EU membership through all its means in Malta and the EU while ensuring that the fruits of accession were fairly distributed to all.

It was therefore important that the MLP was strong in all aspects related to the EU and after its general conference next month it would seek to convince all Labourites to vote for the party in the Euro parliament elections as well as the local council elections.

Earlier, Dr Sant said the problems the government had swept under the carpet before the election were now threatening the future of many families.

Time was already showing how the party lost the election but it was winning credibility because it was being shown to have spoken the truth. Before the election he had warned the workers in many factories about their future, and now there was widespread concern about job security. The government had promised a rosy future after Malta decided to join the EU but one sector after another was now being described as unsustainable, the government wanted to raise retirement age to 65, the financial hole was getting deeper and over the past five years, the tax intake had risen by Lm60 million. Tourism was going from bad to worse and the government had made a U-turn on the wage freeze.

These were problems created by the government itself because over the past few years it had not sought to tackle them but had concentrated exclusively on EU membership.

The MLP's duty was not to have the workers shoulder the burden of the government's actions, Dr Sant said.