There were several conflicting reactions expressed by readers of last Sunday's column. Perhaps the principal complaint was that you discussed what the European Union should be doing. Should you not have something more to say about what Malta should be doing?

Rather than saying what the EU should be doing, last week I tried to say what I thought Malta should be trying to persuade the EU to do. However, there is at least one policy that I think Malta should adopt inde-pendently of the EU's likely opinion about it.

On one hand, I certainly do not agree with any proposal implying open-breach of our international commitments. On the other, I would have no pangs of conscience about adopting any policy that I believed to be both in the best ultimate interest of the Union and also in Malta's specific interest, even if EU bigwigs would very l ikely disapprove were they to be needlessly consulted about it.

Let me begin by quoting from my own personal experience. There was a brilliant young man who had been given humanitarian status in Malta and he was one of several well-qualified and diligent graduates of their own country's uni-versities whom I assisted to resume study at our own higher education institutions, espec-ially in courses that do not attract the desirable number of Maltese candidates, such as in the Health services.

After the time that my friend was forced to spend in Malta, he managed to get to Norway, where he spent two years on a course and during which time he became fluent in Norwegian and obtained a qualification in accountancy. At that point, the Norwegian authorities estab-lished that he had reached their country from Malta. They promptly sent him back here.

Now, of course, Norway is not an EU member state. But suppose that my friend had gone to an EU country instead and that he had received Maltese citizenship. He would have been entitled to stay there. It is an indubitable fact that hardly any of the so-called irregular immigrants come to Malta with the intention of making it their permanent home. They all naturally prefer countries of greater size and opportunities.

However, in the period during which they have to stay here, they could be trained to improve their language and other cultural skills so that when they go to a preferred state, they can usefully fill the employment gaps created by downward demographic trends and native reluctance to go in for certain categories of job. To provide such people with the legal means with which they can continue their migratory passage to the desired foreign pastures is surely not worse but better than refuelling their wobbly boats on a rough sea journey. It is manifestly more humane and equitable.

Last week, you argued that the combination of the global economic crisis and the attempted mass migration from Africa to Europe created the opportunity for the European Union to reopen the perspectives of creating a new world economic order that was a third way between the prevalent uncontrolled free market capitalism and the defunct socialist system. Do you maintain that this is a viable option?

In 2000, my old Oxford fellow student and friend, Perry Anderson, reassumed the editorship of the New Left Review, that had for decades advocated a leftwing policy that rejected both undemocratic Stalinism and weak Social Democracy. He asserted that "the conjuncture of '89 had sealed the virtually uncontested consolidation and universal diffusion of neo-liberalism". He judged that for "the first time since the Reformation there are no longer any significant oppositions - that is systemic rival outlooks - within the thought-world of the West".

Anderson was castigated by many left wingers for "pessimism of the intellect" (as a 2007 book by Duncan Thompson is entitled). He still maintained that nothing short of a "global economic crisis" would give the politics sponsored by the NLR any practical chance of popular success. Now, however, there is just such a global economic crisis. In principle, neither Christian nor Social Democrats accept untrammelled free market economics. Surely, this is their great opportunity vis-à-vis the Right.

Are you disappointed about how the combined issue of Euro-African relations and rampant Neo-Liberalism are being tackled in the European Parliament election campaign?

From my point of view, the entanglement of the two issues is hardly being tackled at all. The PN, on the whole, seems more interested in preventing erosion of its vote from the Right. The PL does not appear to be even concerned about the components of a genuinely Left politics. The others do not even have a traditional reference to the policies that have been professed by such philosophers and colleagues as Perry Anderson or Charles Taylor.

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Miriam Vincenti.