The Tiktok generation calls it YOLO – you only live once, in the belief that you should make the most of the present moment without worrying too much about the future. Around 2,050 years ago the Roman poet Horace used to call it ‘carpe diem’, to seize the day, to enjoy life while you can.

Not everyone agrees that Horace was promoting the view that we should live for the day as if there was no tomorrow.

We should not practise YOLO or ‘carpe diem’ politics with our eyes on ‘opinion polls’ and as long as numbers do not go down, continue with business as usual, ignoring the consequences of our actions for future generations.

One might argue that short-termism is inevitable in a political and economic system that moves from one election to the next, even though most of our challenges need long-term planning and implementation to be adequately addressed.

Four months ago, I called for a serious debate on Malta’s viability as a nation state and the need to seriously address how we are going to earn our living in the years ahead.

We need an urgent discussion about how we are going to create sustainable social and economic development in the face of a reality where substantial parts of our economy are maturing and dying but no new sectors are being born to replace them.

Factors beyond our control will continue to make us change our business. Factors such as European and international regulations regarding tax, aviation, energy, banking and anti-money laundering. Our global and regional value and supply chains are changing due to COVID and the Ukraine war and a new multipolar world is emerging.

 We have to manage the transition away from fossil fuels without hurting our businesses and families. The shortage of skills available for the jobs created locally; high rents which make Malta unattractive and expensive for foreign workers; high energy costs which put up production costs, all hit our existing businesses and inward investment in manufacturing and financial services and i-Gaming.

A glance at our history in the last two centuries is enough to show us that we have had to reinvent ourselves over and over again to ensure that we can survive and live on these islands. When for some reason or other, we did not manage to create jobs and economic growth, our people lived in misery or emigrated to other parts of the Mediterranean and all four corners of the world.

Our future is here already

We need to reinvent our business model, because we can only remain viable if we can participate fully in the global and regional economy through export-oriented services and products.

We cannot depend only on our construction and tourism sectors. We need other economic sectors if we are going to have enough jobs and revenue to support a strong welfare state and public services.

We cannot depend only on our construction and tourism sectors. We need other economic sectors- Evarist Bartolo

A serious national debate on our future should include a discussion on our low birth rate. We complain that foreigners are overcrowding Malta and that Malta is overbuilt yet still continue building and bringing in foreigners. We have three choices: to go for an economy that is strong enough to sustain our welfare state and public services, take measures to increase our birth rate and depend less on imported workers or shrink the economy, bring in less workers from overseas but also put our standard of living at risk.

We are one of the countries with the lowest birth rate in the EU. At the same time our population is forecast to rise to 668,000 by 2050. That seems far away and remote. It is not. It is just 28 years away.

Two-thirds of our present population will be still around by then – living with the consequences of what we do or do not do now. Our present population is estimated to be 533,286, of which more than 22 per cent are foreigners.

If we feel invaded by foreign workers now, and their impact on our rents, schools, hospitals and traffic, how will the Maltese of 2050 feel when our population is set to increase by another 100,000, mostly not through local births but through workers coming from abroad?

We must decide – if we complain about foreign workers without increasing our own birth rate, isn’t it natural that more foreigners will work here? Or do we want to shrink the economy? What will that mean for our welfare state and for our public services?

In the last four months, some of our media and a number of opinion writers have taken up the issues that I have raised about our future. It is a good start but definitely not enough. We need our people in politics, business and civil society to engage in a robust debate about our future. 

Navel gazing is only healthy if it leads to a deep understanding of where we are, making an honest assessment of our shortcomings and drawing up a national inclusive and strategic action plan on the way forward. If we do not treat our current national myopia, it can only degenerate and with it our country.

Whatever we decide, we have become a multicultural society, and this cannot be reversed.

We need to have a serious plan of action that helps us to embrace diversity and learn to live together as equals.

Evarist Bartolo is a former foreign and education minister.