Malta in the European Union

Mark Harwood

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781472436665
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317102090
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Malta has bucked the trend of its EU Mediterranean neighbours in many ways. This smallest of EU states barely dipped into recession during the global financial crisis and remains a stable member of the Eurozone whilst also having one of the lowest infringement rates and highest transposition of EU law records amongst the 28 member states. Providing the first comprehensive study of Malta's complex road to EU membership this book looks at the impact of membership on the country's political structures and processes and explains the principal factors that have conditioned the country's Europeanization experience. Reflecting Malta's unique and often contentious road to membership, the book explores the historical context and outlines how Maltese processes and policies have changed since membership and whether a causative link exists between these changes and Malta's membership of the EU. A wide range of primary and secondary sources facilitate the study complemented by a series of interviews with a broad range of Malta's political and social actors as well as individuals from EU institutions. This depth of analysis enables a holistic view of Malta's first decade of EU membership and helps establish the fundamental characteristics of Malta's unique Europeanization experience.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Malta is the smallest EU member state, a country of 419,000 people located midway between Italy and Libya at the centre of the Mediterranean. Malta was a British colony from 1800 to 1964 and its political system is a variation of the Westminster/Whitehall export model while the country enjoys close ties with the UK and also Italy, its nearest neighbour. With the Maltese given control over domestic affairs in 1921, the election of Maltese governments is based on the Single Transferable Voting electoral system which normally supports the emergence of multiple parties but which has in Malta, since 1966, created a two-party political system with the Socialists, the Malta Labour Party, to the left, and the Christian Democrats, the Nationalist Party, to the right. Unsurprisingly, politics is highly polarised on all key issues and from 1987 to 2003 a central cleavage in domestic politics was EU membership with the Socialists against and the Christian Democrats in favour. Applying in 1990 to join the EU, the European Commission noted its concern about Malta’s small and insular economy, its constitutional neutrality and its limited administrative capacity (Pace 2001: 255) and the prospects of joining remained unclear until 2003 when a referendum on the issue was won by a majority in favour. Since joining in 2004 along with Cyprus and eight Central and Eastern European countries, Malta appears to have managed membership well, often avoiding many of the negative connotations attached to other EU Mediterranean states who are invariably, if not unfairly, depicted as ‘laggards’, ‘policy-takers’, the cause of the recent sovereign debt crisis, dependent on EU monies, the ‘flaky southern fringe’ of European integration at opposites to the northern, hard core (The Financial Times as quoted in Verney 2009: 1). However, no substantive study has addressed Malta’s experience of membership, in particular the impact of the Union on Malta’s domestic political system, that very same system which represents Malta’s interests in EU policy-making and manages the business of complying with the obligations of membership. To what extent Malta defies the regional labels referenced above and how it manages to administer the burden of membership with only 29,000 public servants (Spanish Presidency 2010) is the focus of this book.

The EU and the Mediterranean

The European Union began as a post-World War II integration drive amongst six countries with only one of those, Italy, being a wholly Mediterranean state. The European shores of the Mediterranean were, in the 1950s, economically depressed with migratory flows northwards and an antiquated, agrarian economy throughout (Bindi and Cisci 2005: 143; Hibou 2005: 233). Politically, the region was no less attractive with non-democratic regimes in Spain, Portugal and Yugoslavia and persistent instability in Greece and Turkey while Italy saw economic progress confined to the north with a polarised political system with an annual turnover in governments masking a permanent one party government run by the Christian Democrats (Mascitelli 2005). In the waters of the Mediterranean, Malta and Cyprus were negotiating independence from the UK towards the end of the 1950s while North Africa and the Middle East grew moribund under increasingly autocratic rule as regional instability, facilitated by the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, the spread of pan-Arabism and the legacy of colonialism seemed to further underscore the fate of Arabs to endure the iron fist of centralised and non-democratic government.

Within the framework of the 1956 Rome treaty, which established the European Economic Community, provisions were made to negotiate special relationships with individual or groups of countries and out of this the EEC developed two distinct forms of partnership in the Mediterranean, one with its former colonies, the other with potential applicants for EEC membership. In terms of the first group, France was eager to maintain preferential trading arrangements with its former territories in North Africa, primarily with Morocco and Tunisia, Algeria being a French overseas department on the signing of the Rome Treaty, but the Community was only a partial customs union up until 1968 which placed restrictions on the types of external trade relations the Community could have throughout the 1960s. For this reason, in the first 15 years of the Community, agreements with the southern Mediterranean focused in particular on bilateral trade with Morocco, Tunisia and Israel. In 1972 the European Community launched a Global Mediterranean Policy which standardised the content and duration of bilateral treaties and concluded agreements with nearly all the Maghreb and Mashreq countries.¹ Subsequently, an additional layer of cooperation was added in 1995 with the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership which augmented the bilateral agreements with a regional programme which sought to stimulate political, economic and cultural cooperation between the EU and its Mediterranean partners and this approach was further consolidated with the 2004 Neighbourhood Policy, the 2008 Union for the Mediterranean and the recent, updated, Neighbourhood Policy, issued after the Arab Spring. Consolidating that cooperation, a Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly was established in 2004 and the Union for the Mediterranean Secretariat in 2010.

Concurrent with the Community’s relations with Arab states, the Rome treaty included provisions for closer relations, permissible under the GATT, with prospective member states, the second strand of partnerships in the region. Thus, Mediterranean states also considered ‘European’ were eligible for trade relations which also included financial assistance and political dialogue commensurate with preparing countries for future accession. Greece was the first country to approach the Community, followed by Turkey, and with the promise of entering into a customs union with the Community both Athens and Ankara secured agreements in 1961 and 1963 respectively. In 1970 Malta, independent since 1964, signed its Association Agreement followed by Portugal in 1972 and Cyprus at the end of the same year. By this time the Community had experienced its first enlargement with the entry of the UK, Denmark and Ireland while events across the Mediterranean were indicating seismic shifts in the political establishments in Greece, Portugal and Spain; with an embryonic form of democracy established in each, the Community rushed to welcome Greek membership in 1981, against the recommendations of the European Commission, but were more cautious in opening the doors to the Iberian peninsula, Spain and Portugal joining in 1986.

Therefore, by the mid-1980s, four of the 12 EC member states were Mediterranean countries with a fifth, France, enjoying a Mediterranean border and often seeing itself as the principal European player in the region. The Community’s expansionary drive was then consolidated by an influx of new applicants with Turkey applying in 1987 and Malta and Cyprus in 1990. The Union currently stands at 28 member states with Croatia, Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia, and Spain being the Union’s Mediterranean member states (Portugal, as with Jordan, has no Mediterranean coast but is taken as a Mediterranean state due to its regional proximity and tendency to mimic the economic features of other Mediterranean states, as with agricultural output). This places nine member states in the Mediterranean region, three of which can be considered substantial EU Member States (MSs), namely France, Italy and Spain and two more which can be considered established MSs, namely Greece and Portugal. However, even though these countries are MSs of some standing with a long history of membership, the region remains mired in negative connotations, raising the question as to why this is the case.

Mediterranean States and the Challenge of EU Membership

While the EU’s Mediterranean policy towards Arab states denotes the idea of a coherent and definable regional dynamic, though many have themselves questioned this approach (Heller 2004), the idea that the EU Mediterranean MSs are a cohesive, regional grouping obscures the fact that these countries vary significantly amongst themselves and do not often operate as a united front (the ‘Olive Group’ which gathers these countries together every six months has almost no traction and does not appear to wield any influence within the Union itself). This is exemplified by the case of France, a semi-Mediterranean state which has often placed significant importance on regional leadership (the 1995 Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, the 2008 Union for the Mediterranean and the 2011 intervention in Libya all involving significant French coordination) but which often subsumes its Mediterranean ambitions within the context of it being a ‘continental European, an Atlantic and a Mediterranean power’ (Calleja 2005: 17) and one where its continental European role is primus inter paris, a role which is further subsumed within the context of the Franco-German alliance; the Mediterranean may be important but it is not the key to understanding France’s role in the EU and this antipathy seems reflected in the mixed experience of many EU Mediterranean states.

Beyond France, the longest serving member state in the region remains Italy. Hampered by its fascist past and unstable, post-war history, Italy’s experience of membership has been complicated; ‘Italian participation in the EU is an odd mix of ritualistic elements, lack of initiative, Euro-enthusiasm, and extremely problematic compliance problems’ (Giuliani and Piattoni 2006: 85). As with other regional member states, membership was the context within which consolidation of the state and its economy was envisaged and that often left Italy operating as the loyal broker in EU decision making as it believed it ‘could better defend its national interest within a policy of European solidarity’ (Bindi and Cisci 2005: 144). Of course, this does not mean that Italy has not managed to secure a voice in protecting its interests in Europe, but those interests are largely seen within a European context, supporting trans-governmental goals, because even the allusion to national interest was seen as problematic due to its nationalistic (potentially fascistic) connotations.² While an admirable and constructive approach to European cooperation, it has meant that ‘the role of “policy entrepreneurs” was usually delegated to others, as is testified by the low level of consciousness and involvement in EU affairs shown by Italian high civil servants’ (Giuliani and Piattoni 2006: 87). This lack of a conspicuous voice in projecting national interests has contributed to the rise of the concept of policy-takers and policy-makers, or decision makers and takers (Bulmer and Lequesne 2013: 267), within the Union with Mediterranean states often assumed to be policy-takers, having to keep up with an EU agenda often formulated by northern MSs (Featherstone and Kazamias 2001: 2); while the concept of policy ‘makers’ and ‘takers’ has been challenged as overly simplistic, there can be no doubt that Italy’s voice within the Union is perceived as a much diminished voice considering the size of its economy and its presence within the EU institutions.

More surprising for such an established MSs was the almost immediate struggle the country faced in coping with the obligations of membership, in particular the transposition and implementation of directives (Hine 2001). As in all member states, these obligations led to institutional reforms at the domestic level so as to better manage this obligation, most notably in Italy with the creation of the Department for the Coordination of EU Policies in 1987. However, the fragmentary nature of Italian politics undermined any attempts at a unified approach in EU affairs and was further complicated by the highly convoluted mechanism for transposing EU law into national law, through an annual Bill submitted to parliament, reinforcing the power of the legislative over the executive. Unsurprisingly, ‘the Italian record in the first five years of the new millennium … was all but under control’ (Giuliani and Piattoni 2006: 92). This fragmentary approach to the coordination of EU affairs often meant that deficiencies in the implementation of policy were often a reflection of earlier problems in projecting voice, or defending Italian interests during EU decision making, which then led to implementation problems later and infringement cases. In fact, according to the literature, ‘Italy is a frequent defendant in the ECJ, and it has had numerous high-profile clashes with the Commission over state aid’ (Hine 2001: 25) and this reflects a profound problem in Italy-EU relations; ‘the relationship between the Italian domestic and the European arenas is insufficiently institutionalized … (and) European policies still count less than domestic policies: the centrality of European law is not yet evident even to the most important institutional actors’ (Guiliani and Pattoni 2006: 100). In this way, in addition to problems in voice, the Italians also experience profound structural and procedural problems which limit the take up of EU policy, often resulting in the label of the country being a ‘laggard’ in terms of transposition and implementation.

This reality represents an intriguing dichotomy which can be found in other EU Mediterranean states; Italy has always been a cooperative partner and one which endeavours to maintain its position at the core of integration, participating actively in the launching of the single currency, but then taken to be much weaker than its size merits, often sidelined during the sovereign debt crisis and sometimes belittled by its partners as with the French decision to reinstate border controls with Italy in 2011 due to French concerns over Italy’s decision to issue temporary visas to irregular migrants, an obvious flouting of the Schengen rules. This dichotomy mirrors the Greek experience and a ‘trend of enthusiastic rhetoric and reluctant practice’ (Zahariades 2006: 204), the reluctant practice being an inadequate uptake and implementation of EU policy, appearing to reflect political and administrative short comings in the state, whether Italy or Greece. In fact, with the Italian state it appears to reflect the relative weakness of the Prime Minister and the strength of the Senate, which often leaves Italian politics moribund (Bindi and Cisci 2005: 145) as well as an inability to project Italy’s interests adequately (Hine 2001: 26).

Greece, the next Mediterranean state to join the EC, saw its experience take place almost exclusively in the context of the political stability offered by membership and this explains why the member states defied the recommendations of the European Commission and proceeded with an early entry for Greece in 1981; ‘the salience of political benefits was still the norm until the mid-1990s, when the prime minister, Simitis, explicitly made the country’s modernization under EU tutelage his highest priority’ (Zahariadis 2006: 194).

Hampered by size, regional location and small weight in the institutions, ‘Greece has not traditionally tried hard to influence EU policies’ (Zahariades 2006: 197) though when it has this is largely in political and security matters as with the attempts to block EU recognition of the FYRO Macedonia. However, as with other small states, Greece had to expend much to defend this stand and managed because such issues fall under decision making which requires unanimity. In this way, it has been selective in projecting voice as one would expect for a small country though the 2004 enlargement, which further diminished its weight in the institutions, saw Greece become more assertive in protecting its interests (Hibou 2005: 235).

In terms of managing the obligations of membership, while the history of the coordination of EU affairs appears more unified in Greece than in Italy, the primary role being shared by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the Ministry for Economy and Finance, Greece has still suffered from a reputation of being deficient in terms of transposition of EU law, especially in the area of the Single Market, a fact which reflects ‘the absence of political will at the top level to clearly articulate a set of priorities … and the general underdevelopment of planning and staffing functions in Greek administration’ (Zahariadis 2006: 197).

In addition to problems in transposing EU law, Greece suffers from a low level of compliance with EU directives, making it ‘one of the thorniest issues affecting Greece’s relations with the EC’ (Iankova and Katzensein 2003: 279). This appears to be a consequence of a lack of political will to identify such issues as a priority and ‘many infringements are in areas relatively “new” to Greece, such as the environment’ (Zahariades 2006: 203) indicating, as with Italy, deficiencies in the state’s administrative and political structures.

The weakness in managing EU affairs has subsequently contributed to an additional problem in that it undermines the benefits of EU money spent in Greece, Greece being one of the largest net recipients of EU funds but where there has been low absorption of that money due to the persistence of a top-down developmental model, where technical expertise and overall coordination is provided by central government, and this has failed to achieve innovation in the groups targeted while inefficiencies in the politico-administrative system, where ‘reforms to decentralize Greek administration have been marred by corruption and inefficiencies’ (Zahariades 2006: 201) only helped to further accentuate the need for reforms. Ultimately, ‘the huge economic state interventions driven by clientelistic, political motives gave rise to a paternalistic, regulatory model, clearly at odds with the economic logic of the EU’ (Ioakimidis 2001: 78).

While Greece was admitted quickly against the advice of the Commission, Portugal and Spain endured seven years of negotiations before they were admitted in 1986. However, the importance of membership for both countries to consolidate democracy and modernise the economy meant that securing membership was a triumph in itself (Royo 2006: 212–213). While often grouped together due to their geographic proximity, Spain and Portugal were at pains to negotiate their accession separately and only established regular contacts at the highest levels after membership.

In terms of voice, Spain is believed to have wielded influence in promoting relations with Latin America as well as developing the Union’s cohesion policies while also pushing for a common stand on the Mediterranean; the EU’s Euro-Mediterranean Partnership was launched in Barcelona in 1995 and the city also houses the Secretariat for the Union for the Mediterranean. Considering its size and location, Spain has been a unified and effective EU player, reflecting the high importance placed on EU membership and the strength of the Spanish executive over the legislative branch of government. However, while Spain can be considered an exception amongst EU Mediterranean states in projecting its interests within the EU, Portugal is considered to have been less conspicuous with some noting the country’s ‘absence of any original contribution to the functioning of Europe’ (Hibou 2005: 234).

In terms of complying with the obligations of membership, both countries coordinate EU affairs within a highly centralised structure focused on the Foreign Ministry but within a political system, as noted above, which invests much power in the Prime Minister who, in the case of Spain, often controls Parliament with a single-party government. This has meant, when compared to Italy, that Spain in particular ‘appears to have better adapted to the EU and to be ‘fitter’ for handling EU decision-making procedures than Italy (has)’ (Bindi and Cisci 2005: 161). However, that ‘fitness’ does not automatically mean the countries have not experienced problems and both Portugal and Spain have manifested a mixed record when evaluating compliance. While transposition records are only slightly above the EU average, implementation is a key problem and Spain has one of the worse records of infringement cases and the literature indicates that, while the country has been effective in influencing EU policy in core areas, that effectiveness does not spread across the whole spectrum of EU policy which results in a failure to upload policy preferences in areas such as immigration, asylum and the environment which then results in implementation problems (Mullerat 2010: 5).

In fact, largely all the EU Mediterranean countries continue to manifest problems in transposing and implementing EU law in the area of the Single Market. As can be seen in Table 1.1, which outlines the transposition rates of the main Me...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Annexes, Charts, Diagrams and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Europeanization
• 3 Maltese Political Development and the Question of ‘Europe’
• 4 The Road to ‘Europe’
• 5 Malta as a Member of the EU
• 6 Malta’s Integration into the Customs Union
• 7 EU Membership and the Maltese Agricultural Sector
• 8 An Assessment of Malta’s Europeanization Experience
• Annexes I–IV
• Bibliography
• Index