When Lawrence Gonzi announced, shortly before last year’s election, that he would “solve Malta’s environmental deficit” in the same way as he had previously solved the country’s financial ‘hofra’, it was at best a case of bad timing.
A year and a half later, the budget deficit is firmly back to its pre-2003 dimensions, to the extent that the European Union has now urged Finance Minister Tonio Fenech to get Malta’s finances back on track by next year, or face possible fines from the European Court of Justice.
Truth be told, the country can ill afford a similar experience with its equally precarious environmental shortfall. But barely 16 months after the Prime Minister assumed political responsible for the Malta Environment and Planning Authority (MEPA), the initial results have not been very encouraging.
Within six months of the election, MEPA was already back in the headlines on a regular basis, and for all the wrong reasons. In fact, the authority has embarked on some of its most controversial decisions to date over the past 12 months alone.
Almost exactly a year ago, we witnessed the notorious Fort Cambridge decision debacle – whereby a press release announcing the approval of this massive development project at Qui-Si-Sana miraculously materialised before the vote was even taken.
More recently still, there was yet another Outside Development Zone permit issued, this time in a scheduled valley in Bahrija. It was the umpteenth case of MEPA overturning its own planning policies and granting development permits against its own case officers’ recommendations; and the fact that the applicant was the Nationalist Party president could only reinforce popular perceptions that MEPA's planning decisions have more to do with applicants' identities and personal contacts, than with environmental concerns or even the country’s planning laws.
For these and other reasons, Lawrence Gonzi’s reform of MEPA, due to be published tomorrow, represents more than just the overdue fruition of an electoral promise. It is also a case of finally taking responsibility for one of the country’s most serious and pressing problems, with ramifications that will sooner or later affect us all.
That MEPA needs to be overhauled altogether is now a self-evident fact. For one thing, decisions such as the ones outlined above have succeeded in demolishing the authority’s reputation as a custodian of the environment; but while such politically charged cases remain the most publicised, the dangers of an all-powerful regulatory body for the environment are far more subtle and insidious than the occasional suspect permit.
Truth be told, MEPA has far, far outgrown its original raison d’etre, and has really become the “monster” it is so often portrayed to be.
Finding a way to weed out the simply outrageous development applications would be a major contribution to any reform of the planning process. And yet, the existence of such applications - not as plentiful as many may be tempted to believe - is not of itself the most pressing issue at hand.
Such applications may not be legion, but they do take a toll on MEPA’s resources, if nothing else by inviting similar applications on a copycat basis.
Eliminating them would relieve resources which can be more fruitfully used to give a deeper and fairer consideration to other applications, as well as (to an extent) speeding up the adjudication process for other cases.
It would also act as a strong disincentive to those who seem to have made it their life’s vocation to push the planning envelope as far it can possibly go.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. In a country that shot past the 24% vacancy mark in 2005, with 50,000 vacant housing units, the challenge for reform is how to redirect the energies and the resources of the building industry in order to avoid massive loss of employment at a time of global recession.
Adding to the present surplus is a danger to everyone; so is the creation of a glut of luxury apartments, which promises to leave thousands of brand new unpretentious flats permanently stranded in a stagnant market.
The present reform is clearly intended to address the public’s association of the party in government with the less than transparent processes at MEPA.
However, its far greater challenge is to find the means to retake control of the situation: to let steam out of an oversaturated property market without precipitating a collapse.
It is an awesome challenge lying before a government that has so far refused to acknowledge its existence, still less take any concrete action. Tomorrow we will all have a clearer picture of how, exactly, Lawrence Gonzi intends to take ownership of this problem, and deliver on his single most crucial electoral promise.
Fr the good of us all, let us hope his efforts to reform MEPA are not quite as short-lived as his previous promise to reign in the budget deficit.
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