Commission report set to boost Malta’s hopes of swift EU entry

Date: 11/02/1999

By Gareth Harding

The European Commission is expected to give Malta the green light to begin membership talks with the EU when it publishes a report on the country's readiness for entry next week.

But any decision on whether the Mediterranean state can join the 'first wave' of candidate countries will be left to EU leaders at their Cologne summit in June.

Commission officials are refusing to reveal any details of the long-awaited progress report before it is published, but the institution is not expected to raise any obstacles to the start of accession negotiations.

Maltese diplomats say they see no reason why the Commission's opinion should have changed since it produced its first favourable avis in 1993.

With low inflation, strong employment levels and annual gross domestic product per head of €8,100, Malta is one of the richest countries queuing up to join the EU. Since the election of pro-European Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami last September, it has also been busy bringing its national laws into line with Union legislation.

Maltese officials expect the Commission's report to recognise the progress the country has made towards meeting the EU's membership criteria. However, they also expect the opinion to highlight areas where momentum has slowed down since the previous Labour government froze Valletta's bid to join the 15-member club in 1996.

In particular, they anticipate that the report will call for trade liberalisation to be speeded up and for state monopolies to be opened up to competition.

Although the Commission's progress report is almost certain to conclude that Malta is ready to begin talks on EU membership, it is unlikely to touch upon the sensitive issue of when the country will be invited to the negotiating table.

Pending a decision by EU leaders on whether Malta can join the six first-wave countries which have already begun formal accession talks, diplomats say the island's only option is to carry on preparing for membership.

However, the question is not so much whether Malta is ready to join the Union as whether governments are willing to risk unravelling the deal they carefully stitched together in 1997, splitting EU candidate countries into first-wave and second-wave groups.

Union sources fear that if Malta were parachuted into the list of front runners, it would reopen the debate on Slovakia, Latvia and Lithuania's prospects for joining. All three countries have made considerable progress towards meeting EU membership criteria in the past year and have strong support from some Union governments.

Maltese diplomats say they are keenly aware of the “complex political situation” in the Council of Ministers, but are nonetheless confident that the small island state will be amongst the first batch of new entrants early next century.

“Because we are caught in a political tug of war, our trump card is to continue adopting EU laws and prepare ourselves for enlargement, so that when the decision on who enters in the first wave is finally made, we are ready for it,” said one.