To Enter or Not To Enter: Malta and the EU

Since Malta will decide in a referendum this September whether or not to join the EU, one of our major projects was to predict whether Malta will enter; to do this we talked to people of various political parties, professions, ages, social status, in locations all over Malta.

*The officials in the Malta EU office were clearly in favor, whereas the members of the Labour Party were vehemently opposed, fearing loss of jobs to labour immigrants from the Eastern Europeans countries.

*Business and shop-owners ("We have no choice if we want to stay economically competitive"), barkeepers ("Tourism is our main source of revenue"), mothers of school children welcomed the opportunities and additional business which EU membership would bring.

*A number of landowners, environmentalists, teachers and even students feared a flood of sun-hungry northern Europeans ("We don't want to be another Mallorca") and loss of Maltese identity.

*Many rural people took the stand that Malta had not been independent long enough to enter such a binding alliance, some mentioned that the connections to Arab and African countries were geographically just as important as ties to Europe, and the passionate bird-shooters were enraged at the thought of EU regulations!

*We noticed that, on the whole, the more fluent an interviewee was in English, the more in favor (s)he was in seeing Malta join the EU - in many cases, language and educational background (private church schools produced the best English speakers!) seemed to reflect the degree of European internationality.

Our prediction: Malta will vote to enter the EU, but the vote will be very close indeed!