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OPINION | Sunday, 11 November 2007

That 400 million euro penalty!

ANNA MALLIA

Why is the government so reluctant to let us know how much are we paying the European Union in VAT, fines and penalties? Why does the government only want to tell us how much we are receiving from the EU, and not how much we are paying back? Why are parliamentary questions on the subject being ignored by the government? Don’t we all have the right to know?
This is not a question of who’s in favour or against EU membership: this is a question of having the right to know how our tax money is being spent. So far we have heard only about the millions of euros that we have received from Brussels and how generous Brussels is being with us. But an exercise to find out how much we have received and how much we have sent back has to date not been published, and it seems that the government is very, very reluctant to make these figures known.
All this fear can be the result of two things: either the tables have turned in favour of Brussels, or Brussels does not allow the government to publish these statistics. We all know that we have to give back to Brussels the VAT that we pay over here. We all know that for the period 2008 to 2012, Malta faces a penalty of €410 million if it does not comply with the targets set by the EU Emissions Trading Scheme.
As if 2008 is very far away, the government has still failed to tell us how it intends to negotiate with Brussels so that this hefty €410 million euro penalty will be mitigated or struck off. Under the provisions of the EU directive, Malta is proposing 2.96 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year in its National Allocation Policy for the period 2008 to 2012, of which 2.19 million would be Enemalta’s and 700,000 would be from the New Entrant Reserve.
However, the European Commission has decided that the total should be 2.14 million tones a year, meaning that Malta would somehow have to reduce its emissions by over 27 per cent! The penalty stipulated in the directive is around €100 per tonne which would work out tat €410 million between 2008 and 2012.
This means that you and I have to give to Brussels €1,000 out of our pockets, because the government has failed to negotiate better terms for us in this respect. It is very unfortunate that our MEPs and MPs have kept us in the dark about this. So far, only Alternattiva Demokratika, through Arnold Cassola, is highlighting this time-bomb. If we do not manage to defuse it by the end of this year – that is, in the next month or so – the Brussels penalty clock will start ticking.
Is there anybody out there working so that this penalty will not be incurred by Malta? It is a known fact that Malta’s carbon dioxide comes from the generation of energy and from use of fossil fuel in industry, commercial and residential sectors to a lesser extent. So can anybody tell us what Enemalta is doing to reduce the level of carbon dioxide from its power stations and what WasteServe is doing to reduce the methane levels which are emitted from decomposing waste, both of which are fairly high?
Many blame it only on the EU directive, but we must not forget the conditions agreed to by the government in the treaty which former PM Eddie Fenech Adami signed with the European Union upon membership. In that treaty the government made many commitments regarding these emissions and signed many deadlines, which commitments and deadlines were and still are impossible to reach.
It is therefore very unfair that we are now made to pay hefty penalties for something that we citizens have no control and the persons who should bear the brunt are those who were so presumptuous as to sign commitments which they knew they could never honour.
They talk of the high price in fuel but they do not tell us that because of the EU directives on sulphur, we cannot import diesel from Libya although it is better and cheaper. Because of the EU, we are committed to buying fuel at 1% sulphur, and this is costing the taxpayer USD25 million a year. But of course, they blame the surcharge solely on the rise of fuel in the international markets. They never make any reference to the treaty negotiated with the EU and our commitment not to buy diesel with more than 3% sulphur.
It is high time the government explained how it is going to meet its deadlines regarding the energy sector, and if these deadlines cannot be met, to explain who shall be responsible for the damages caused to Brussels. We are taxed enough as we are, what with the surcharge, and it is not fair to impose on us an additional burden of €410 million which would have to be paid to Brussels between 2008 and 2012.
Suffice it to say that we have been left in the dark regarding the surplus of 2,452 tonnes of sugar in, and that we are still awaiting the decision of the European Court of Justice on the interpretation of the Birds Directive.
Why should we made to pay for the intransigence of others?



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