Raphael Vassallo | Sunday, 29 March 2009

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Europe’s best-kept secret

Dear José Manuel Durão Barroso: Hi! We’ve never met, but I’m one of the 500 million citizens of this thing called the “European Union”, and I have a tiny, weeny complaint to make.
José: in case you’ve not yet noticed, Malta has been an EU member state for five years. OK, I am under no illusion about the real motives behind our accession. We all know it had nothing to do with European integration, harmonisation of respect for human rights, and all that crap. We know it was just so that our ruling Christian Democratic party can continue buying election after election with money generously thrown at it by the European taxpayer.
And guess what? I don’t even care any more. As far as I’m concerned the Nationalists can carry on spending European money till the cows come home, the horse goes to water, the chicken gets run over and the bull hits the fan. All of it would be worthwhile... if we also got a few benefits for ourselves, instead of just for our political leaders.

And sorry, José, but by “benefits” I don’t mean only buckets of EU funds in order to keep your Union’s borders nice and secure. I mean empowerment as citizens. I mean living in a wider Europe which actually respects our individual rights.
Speaking of which: have you not yet noticed, José, that Malta is the only European member state to deny its citizens the ability to divorce? OK, I admit that in practice it’s not half as bad as it sounds. All it means is that people with enough money can institute divorce proceedings in other EU member State; and that our law courts, in true Malta hypocrisy fashion, will recognise the outcome, even if they can’t grant a divorce themselves. But damn it, I’m talking rights here, José. Why is a civil right like divorce good enough for citizens of Germany, Italy, Finland and the Faeroe Islands... but not for that Mediterranean backwater country you accidentally admitted to the Union in 2004?

But what has all this got to do with you, you might be asking? Fair enough: at the end of the day, any local divorce legislation will have to come from our own parliament, and not from the European Commission at all.
But José: your Commission seems to always have a thing or two say about discrimination, unfair competition, non-level playing fields and the freedom or otherwise of enterprise. After all, colleagues of yours have come here on countless occasions to tell what we can and cannot do as members: Neelie, to tell us how to privatise our national assets; Jacques, how to run our detention centres; Stavros, when we can and cannot shoot birds...
That’s right, José. Malta gets infringement procedures slapped on its backside for failing to abide by the Growth and Stability Pact (funny, though, because when Italy had the exact same problem, the Commission was only too happy to scrap the procedure altogether...) and yet, the same European Commission that hits the roof over our national budget deficit, or spring hunting, or VAT on registration tax, suddenly has nothing whatsoever to say about a juridical system which routinely discriminates between citizens of different member states.

I am sorry, José, but it doesn’t make sense, and you know it. You cannot expect to fly the flag of European equality, when some Europeans are manifestly more equal than others.
And that’s not to mention all the other issues in which we get treated differently from other members. Are you aware, for instance, that there exists in Malta a board of people who get to choose what the rest of us can and cannot watch on stage? Recently these people decided that we cannot watch a play by the winner of the Evening Standard best new playwright award. Yes, José: a play that can be performed on stage throughout the European Union, from the Orkney islands to the rocky steppes of eastern Lithuania, cannot be staged in Malta on pain of criminal action.
By the way, José: this took place under your stewardship of the Union. So tell me, Mr European Commission: can you guarantee to us, the citizens of Malta, that the same Stage Censorship Board (the only one in Europe, by the way) will not find an excuse to ban other plays in future, because they are critical of the Church, or the ruling government of the day?
No? I can’t say I blame you. It is after all an entirely plausible scenario. It has happened in the past, and I have absolutely no doubt – judging by the speed at which my country has regressed since joining the EU five years ago – that it will happen again. Very soon, Malta will be the only European country in which political dissidents can legally be silenced by a board of State-approved censors; and of course you, the Commission president, will have absolutely nothing to say about it.

For let’s be honest, José: you don’t really give a toss about human rights, do you? Except, of course, on those rare occasions when a country’s human rights record can be used to bully it into giving you what you want. Which reminds me: how are negotiations with Turkey coming along? And while I’m on the subject, there’s another question I’ve been meaning to ask you for ages...
José: are the Turks more “human” to you than the Maltese? If not, why are their rights more important to Europe than ours?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems that Turkey has been given countless ultimatums to get its human rights house in order, before its application to join the EU can even be considered. How strange. No such pressure was ever placed on us. On the contrary: Malta underwent protracted negotiations lasting several years, and the European Commission (admittedly before your tenure of office) never played the human rights card once. That’s right, José: we talked about abortion, we discussed structural funds, we talked about birds, bees and Sicilian hairdressers... and not once was it mentioned that Malta is the only European country in which persons can be detained by the police for 48 hours, without being allowed a phone call... without their family being informed of their arrest... and more specifically, without even access to a lawyer.
What’s that, José? Not really interested? Well, let me tell you anyway. In Malta, a person arrested by the police has only one right while in custody: he has to be charged within 48 hours, or else released.
In the course of a typical police interrogation, the suspect will usually be presented with a written confession, which he or she is expected to sign in the presence of numerous intimidating officers. I have heard of people who were made to believe they would be automatically convicted if they refused to sign. Of course, this tactic would hardly work, if the same suspects also had access to a lawyer to actually inform them of their rights.
But that’s precisely the point, José. In Malta, people in police custody do NOT have any such rights. Is this the same anywhere else in the EU? I don’t think so...

And that’s not to mention the reasons you can actually get arrested in Malta. Did you know, José, that with Malta an EU member state since 2004, you can still go to prison for making fun of the Archbishop? Do you know that just three weeks ago, a man was sentenced to a six-month term, suspended for 18 months, for going to a Carnival dressed up as Jesus Christ? Are you aware that blasphemy is a criminal offence? That Maltese laws dating back to 1930 stipulate prison sentences for people who offend the religious sentiments of others? Or who impersonate priests or nuns?

Some of us, José, actually believed that joining Europe would help us put the Middle Ages behind us. We believed (naively) that Europe made it a point that all its citizens had access to the same rights, without discrimination. How wrong we were. European accession has actually been a humiliating experience for us, José. There is a Maltese expression to describe our newfound pariah status. It doesn’t translate very well into English, and my Portuguese isn’t good enough to even try. In Spanish it would be “los hijos de la criada”: the servants’ children, allowed to play with the toys of their betters, but denied all the privileges that the others enjoy by right.

How ironic, though, that we should be worse off after joining the EU than before...

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