POINTS OF VIEW MaltaToday asks prominent personalities and opinion formers to comment on the campaign themes and main electoral issues ahead of Malta’s second-ever European election next Saturday
Sharon Ellul Bonici - Partit Laburista
On the European Socialists The party line that Jason talks about is the control by the European socialists. And the European socialists do not permit freedom of expression if it is criticism of the EU, even if this would be of detriment to our country… the European socialists work for EU power to be centralised in Brussels. video launch of EUDemocrats (EUD) on Youtube, April 2008
On Labour’s U-turn To me it was the referendum that counted. The truth is Labour has shifted from its opposition to the EU, to a position today where it is scared of criticising the EU because the PN will attack it with the accusation that it wants to withdraw from the EU. Labour is literally mute on what is detrimental to Malta. MaltaToday, April 2008
On moving on from her NO days A lot of people are still stuck in a Yes/No mentality. Personally, I’ve moved on since the referendum. It’s the Yes camp that evidently hasn’t... MaltaToday, February 2009
On the working time directive Who could possibly disagree with that? But in practice we all know it would be detrimental to Malta. Take doctors and nurses, for example. It’s common knowledge they work more than 40 hours a week because of a staff shortage. It’s not an ideal situation, but that is the reality. If you applied the directive to Malta, you would end up with a situation whereby patients would not have access to medical staff... MaltaToday, February 2009
On being a Eurorealist No, I have never defined myself as a Euro-sceptic. That’s a label given to me by others. I think it’s a disparaging way of referring to people who argue against a federal Europe. I prefer to use the term ‘Euro-realist’ myself... MaltaToday, February 2009
On the EU referendum Five years ago, the people were faced with an option: either to join the EU, or not to join. For my part I argued that we should not join, because membership would be detrimental to Malta. As for the referendum, I always wanted to respect that vote... MaltaToday, February 2009
On withdrawing from the EU I personally disagree: in fact I think it would be political suicide. The damage to our international reputation would be irreversible. We would project the image of an unreliable nation that can’t make up its own mind. This in turn would diminish our standing in international fora... which would negatively affect foreign investment... and ultimately, the citizens would suffer.” MaltaToday, February 2009
On abortion Having placed all their efforts towards amending the Maltese constitution, (Gift of Life) now realise they have committed a major error by ignoring the Lisbon treaty. Being uninformed, they were not aware that even if they attained their goal, the Lisbon treaty could eventually nullify their prize in a day’s work,” www.sharon4malta.com, April 2009
On federalism Since Malta is a small state, the more the EU centralises power the more we lose say over our own governance. With the Lisbon treaty, Malta already loses a lot more voting power in the EU Council – not only because the weighting system is replaced by population-size proportionality, but also because more areas are moved from unanimous voting to qualified majority voting, while new Union competences are created.” www.sharon4malta.com, April 2009
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All the interviews from Reporter on MaltaToday's YouTube channel.
video launch of EUDemocrats (EUD) on Youtube, April 2008 
