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Throughout my campaign I have been stressing the link between education, innovation and the creation of new jobs. Education is crucial if we are to exploit all the advantages of EU membership in so many fields, from dealing with urban and environmental problems to providing gainful employment for women in a labour market whose profile is rapidly changing.
At the European Parliament Malta can put forward the case for ‘reinventing’ educational practice, for making the schooling process more attractive, more creative, less burdensome, less painful. We need to produce educational programmes that cater for people’s needs and involve a wider, more democratic participation. Successive Nationalist administrations have put us on the right track, but we need to do more, especially where tertiary education, social inclusion and adult learning are concerned.
We have the resources at hand to transform Malta into a learning centre. Malta can be instrumental in bridging in socio-economic and socio-cultural gap dividing the northern from the southern shores of the Mediterranean.
I have also been stressing the idea that culture pays. There are huge dividends to be reaped by Malta if we manage to get our act together and make best use of our cultural assets in the field of tourism. We need to market our cultural assets in the best way possible, constantly, imaginatively and energetically, until Malta establishes itself as a prime cultural site, a choice destination for those whose main reasons for travelling are cultural.
One committee on which I would like to sit if elected is the committee for culture. The aims of the EU’s cultural policy are to bring out the common aspects of Europe’s heritage, enhance the feeling of belonging to one and the same community, while recognizing and respecting cultural, national and regional diversity and helping cultures to develop and become more widely known.
The EU takes cultural matters into account in all its policies. Before May 2004, the financial assistance which the EU made available under its social and regional policies amounted to at least 500 million per year. This figure is bound to increase dramatically now that 10 new states have joined.
One of the main roles of the new Maltese MEP’s, as I see it, is to make information about funding available to all concerned and to make sure that no funds are lost because of lack of knowledge or as a result of bureaucratic practices.
Joe Friggieri is a PN candidate for the European Parliament Election
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