The European Commission remains of the view that Malta’s passport-selling scheme breaches EU law, pointing out what is certainly obvious to those buying Maltese passports: they are, more importantly, European passports. Malta continues to insist that whom it recognises as Maltese citizens is its business, not the European Commission’s or anybody else’s.

Citizenship is the individual share of the sovereignty of a country. But, as members of the EU, we have shared our sovereignty with others. That imposes on us an obligation of fair play and an expectation of reciprocity. We must do onto our brethren what we expect them to do to us.

And, right now, we’re harming them.

This argument is more important and more fundamental even than the danger of allowing a Russian oligarch to hide in plain sight within Europe holding a Maltese passport. Though there certainly is that.

We are scratching here on a deeper question, one about the very nature of Europe. Victor Orban, who has just won a fourth term as prime minister of Hungary, speaks of a vision of an “illiberal” Europe, a confederation of sovereign states that share money and other economic benefits but not the values we would have considered as European: democracy, the rule of  law, free speech, universal respect of human rights, compliance with international law, protection of vulnerable people, intellectual liberty and so on.

There’s a legal argument that says there’s nothing stopping an EU member state from becoming fascist if it chooses to because the political values of a country are for that country to decide and no European institution can police that.

Orban is particularly successful in his country but his vision for a fascist, amoral and isolationist confederation is far from unique. This is the chain that connects him to Salvini in Italy, Le Pen in France and several other right-wing ideologues from Spain to Poland and from Greece to Denmark.

These people often refer to the sovereign rights of their countries but few of them are keen to renounce the privilege of imposing their choices on the rest of Europe.

Let’s keep this to the granting of citizenship for a moment. Orban is an unembarrassed ally of Vladimir Putin and in a public speech this week listed Volodymyr Zelensky as one of his enemies.

How would we feel if Orban decided to grant Hungarian citizenship to indicted Russian war criminals and they showed up at our airport, sashaying through the Schengen corridor with a Diner’s Club Card and a lease agreement for some waterfront property?

By Malta’s interpretation of the exclusive rights of member states, it is nobody’s business whom Orban gives his country’s passports to. And, by virtue of being EU members, we are obliged to treat all citizens of his country, no matter the basis on which his country recognises them as its citizens, as if they were our own.

In this universe, fugitive Nazis won’t have to hide in Argentina. They can colonise St George’s Bay instead.

How would we feel if Orban decided to grant Hungarian citizenship to indicted Russian war criminals and they showed up at our airport, sashaying through the Schengen corridor?- Manuel Delia

If I used this example nine years ago when the passport-selling scheme was introduced, I would have been laughed off. I suppose few people had the foresight to imagine the situation we’d be in today. I didn’t.

Now here we are, members of a Union that includes countries governed by people who do not share even the most fundamental idea of what the Union should stand for. In a choice between “free” and “illiberal”, they chose “illiberal”. In a choice between invader and invaded, they side with the invader.

There are two paths ahead of us. The short-sighted will argue for the fragmentation of Europe or, at least, the curtailment of its competence. The other path leads to a deeper Union, standing tighter together as a federation of countries committed to democracy and human rights and bound by mutual trust.

As Robert Abela’s government argues with the European Commission on the semantics of citizenship, as his ministers count the coins they scrape from the passport-selling scheme, we talk ourselves out of the democratic federation based on mutual trust simply because we’ve squandered the right to be trusted.

One final note. The government might be pitching this as a principled argument when even for them, perhaps, it is not a matter of principle. How can it be when clearly the only reason for the scheme is the money it makes the government and the other beneficiaries? We’re not saving souls from drowning or from war. We’re not reconnecting to some long-lost diaspora. Money alone is no principle.

Our dependence on the scheme is the money that it gives us and which we may not be able to give up without first finding an alternative source of income. In that case, the government should approach things differently. It could tell the Commission we would reluctantly comply if we’re given X months to transition out of the scheme.

After all, Europe gives Moscow hundreds of millions of dollars every day in exchange for oil and gas whatever we think of Moscow now, until such time that we can get the oil and gas from somewhere else.

My objection to the scheme is principled and, as far as I’m concerned, it should be abolished this morning. But I have the luxury of not having the responsibility of finding the money to run the country.

Even so, and with all the compromises necessary, our government must choose which vision of Europe they subscribe to. To flip on its head the metaphor by Dom Mintoff, they must choose between Cain’s Europe or Abel’s.