The prime minister’s anger at not being consulted by the European Commission on the would-be appointment of its representative in Malta
A couple of newspapers reported yesterday on the prime minister’s anger at not having been consulted by the European Commission on its appointment of Joanna Darmanin as a successor to its current representative in Malta, Martin Bugelli.
He said that it is an “unspoken rule” for the European Commission to consult the host country when such an appointment is made. I have a couple of earlier posts up about this.
A friend who worked for the European Commission for several years has since sent me this email.
I was there when many such decisions were taken for different countries, including Malta, and observed several of these processes within the European Commission from close up.
t is true that when such decisions are taken there is usually a courtesy, informal consultation with the government of the country concerned – more along the lines of “We are thinking of candidate X; we assume you could live with him/her as the Commission Representative there”.
The only exception is when the Commission is dealing with a member state government which it regards as a problem, or a pariah. In those cases they made sure they appointed someone they have full faith in themselves; screw the opinion of the government in questioin if that government was no longer a credible partner.
I remember only two such exceptions in my time there. I think they were Hungary and Slovakia when they had anti-European, far right governments.
This lack of consultation, if the appointment is made, is proof that the European Commission now sees the government of Malta as a problem rather than a partner.
It is just the tip of the iceberg of the countless ways that they will make the Maltese prime minister pay for:
1. appointing John Dalli as his adviser and making him the government’s consultant on healthcare when the European Commission is still investigating him for multiple violations of the Commissioner’s Code of Conduct (let alone the law);
2. for the prime minister’s migrant push-back position before the European Court of Justice intervened; and
3. for going ahead with the shameful citizenship sale in full defiance of an overwhelming resolution against it by the European Parliament, and despite EU Commissioner Reding’s clear and strong objections to it and her declaration that no, she had not been consulted on the matter.
The Maltese government think they know how much cash they will rake in through their ‘get-rich-quick’ scheme. They still have no idea how much it will cost them. Or rather, how much it will cost us.
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Somebody tell Joseph that it takes two to Tango, and that does not include the sleeping partner, but the sparring partner.
The coffee is being sent back for the PM to swallow.
The Cabinet is holding a scheduled meeting tomorrow in the Imperial Band Club in Mellieha. This is to fulfill it’s pledge of ‘listening to the people’ Shall we hire a charabanc and all go and tell them what we think of their citizenship sale? And will they listen d’you think?
And it was another blunder – the wrong band club was emailed about the event.
He was at home
The location could not be more apt. The competence of the cabinet does not go beyond the average capabilities of a village band club committee.
I wish the PN had thought of that. A peaceful silent protest against the sale of citizenship. What a splendid occasion it would have been.
It was the European Court of Human Rights, and not the European Court of Justice, that ruled against Muscat’s pushback last summer.
Barely five months into office, Muscat already had a human rights violation ruling against his government.
I guess that a lot of Malta’s economic policies will be scrutinized – the gaming industry and the reduced tax policies in the financial services will be the first targets.
Joseph Muscat will learn the hard way that dealing with the EU is not the same as (i) scheming to becoming a political party leader, or (ii) playing a shallow an an unethical game to win the general election where the mass majority of the population are not sophisticated and vastly uneducated, or for that matters (iii) putting demands, as a single spoilt brat, in a family with aged parents, who drove their kid to primary school so as not to wake up early like the other kids and catch the school bus.
Yes, well, when you play the game by the rules and build up positive capital you get the kind of breaks awarded to Malta under the PN: a blind eye to lax financial laws, a low corporate tax base similar to that conceded to Ireland, igaming, an EU agency way before other much larger countries were given one, being placed in a higher EU funding tier than we were legally entitled to especially considering we are now better off than most of southern Europe, a high-profile portfolio in the Commission, namely Health, Food Safety – Sanco, and the list goes on and on.
Now we are set to lose all of this. Wake up and smell the tea and four sugars you drink from that clear glass you no doubt drink from.
Is the secrecy clause still included in the law as it is today? Are they selling secret passports right now?
Somebody needs to explain to me if they can issue a passport without anyone knowing about it.
Can they sell 1800 passports, publish the names but issue a few more and keep them hidden?
Still part of the law. No part of it has been amended yet.
This would be good to know right now.
The law has not been changed and it says that the personal data of applicants shall not be published.
By publishing the names, the government will be breaking its own law.
Yes it’s still included.
As I have said countless times here on this forum, the ignoring of Muscat at Council meetings was not an accident. Diplomacy is very complex and small things mean a lot.
It became patently obvious that the diplomatic corps’ of the other Member States were advising their respective Prime Ministers/Presidents to avoid the Maltese after what I call ‘the Enda Kenny incident’ where Muscat literally accosted him, much to Kenny’s (the Irish PM) dismay.
Malta 2013/2014 = pariah state.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjw9aGSBD0Q#t=210
2.40, is he on decaffeinated?
Make that over 180 sorry.
I am not surprised at all. It pretty much indicates that the Prime Minister will reap for the country what he has so short-sightedly sowed. What a shame.
Yes there are many ways to skin a cat and the bureaucrats of Brussels will have many devices whereby they can show their displeasure.
What is Muscat’s objection to Ms Darminin? Is she not qualified for the post?
This is unlikely and, judging from some recent appointments by this government, wouldn’t worry Joseph.
The most likely answer is that she did not appear on a poster to extol the virtues of the great leader or, horror of horrors, there may be a blue tinge in her family tree.
Joseph Muscat is so incredibly short-sighted that he thinks he can replace the 1 billion Euro funding from the EU with the cash-for-passports scheme.
All Muscat has been doing over the past months is to provoke the EU into a diplomatic row to garner sufficient nationalistic and xenophobic support internally to get out (or get thrown out) of the EU.
The lost EU funding would be replaced with the passport funding.
The problem here is that without the EU our passports would be worthless, just as they were back in the days when they were green.
The naughty boy is being punished. The pity is that Malta is going to suffer because of this hard headed idiot. That’s what happens when you elect an infant to govern a country.
TIT FOR TAT.
Our PM words. Noted but no thanks.
So did the EU.
That will be the way they treat him. They will tell him to wake up and smell COFFEEEEEEEE.
Go back to journalism.
“Go back to journalism.”
What journalism? He has only ever dealt with poisonous propaganda, both in and (now) out of the newsroom.
SO TRUE.
Is he for real? I hope he keeps up this attitude as it will guarantee the P.N’s reinstatement as the only party that can seriously govern asap. As for our reputation, the hell with that, it has already been damaged beyond repair.
I am hoping for a repetition of the citizen for sale performance with the transport reform and the health reform so the switchers can appreciate their ineptitude and the result of their egoism.
Keep up the work JOZEF halli ir rebha din id darba taghna tkun.
As for anyone who regards my comments as anti patriotic and spiteful- you can sob off, the way our country is being governed is far worse than how I feel about it.
And this is only the beginning of payback time by the EU, for Joseph Muscat’s giving it the proverbial finger after the overwhelming vote against him by the EU parliament last week.
And just to get an idea of the mental convolutions labour apologists are having to make, to try and defend the indefensible, all one had to do was listen to Veronique Dalli on TVAM today.
With the straightest of faces she explained the negative vote as having been manipulated by Barroso in order to WAIT FOR IT ‘ to protect the scheme currently run in his own country Portugal’.
So first it was the Nationalists who enlisted the world press to rubbish the scheme, then it was the two Nationalist MEP traitors who convinced the quasi totality of the EU Parliament (including their Socialist adversaries) to vote against the scheme and now this.
Frankly not even Eddy Privitera could have come up with such a theory – and that’s saying something.
Ta ra ra zin zin zin….
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140120/local/cabinet-to-meet-at-mellieha-band-club.503401
Joseph Muscat must be smelling his coffeee now.
Of course he’s pissed. He’s a position short now in his “taghna lkoll” appointments.
Those of us who lived through the Labour regime of the 70s and early 80s, when Malta was a pariah state, would dream of a stable and peaceful Malta in the European Union. The Nationalists delivered that dream after Alfred Sant nearly wrecked it. In less than a year in power, Joseph Muscat is well on his way to snatching it away from our children.
Muscat must have a brazen cheek to complain that he was not consulted according to his imaginary “unspoken rule”.
Someone who brashly claims the authority to issue a personal dispensation from the observance of our parliamentary code of ethics would not hesitate to issue a dispensation to himself from complying with the WRITTEN Art 4.3 of the Treaty of the European Union at the same time that he insists that the European Union comply with his whimsical “unspoken rules”.
The difficulty is that the European Union would not accept that double standard.
Not quite related but it shows how One News manipulates its people.
The caption of this You Tube clip claims that Nationalist supporters offended the then leader of the opposition Joseph Muscat soon after the budget vote was taken and did not go through.
I watched and listened twice to the video but there was never any mention that Nationalist supporters did offend JM, something that One News would have definitely latched onto and capitalised. Nor was there any footage of such occurrence.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyaRyPT4wUE
Regarding the vote of the European Parliament. I believe that the Prime Minister had said that his Socialist MEPs were working hard to get the Socialist group on their side.
A check of the final 22 votes cast against the motion shows that the Socialist Group proceeded with 6 votes (out of the 22, the others of course coming from other groups, which I can furnish).
Those 6 votes comprised the 4 Maltese MEPs. Meaning that only 2 other socialist MEPs were convinced to vote for Joseph Muscat. That’s the result of the hard work put in by the 4 MEPs, two votes.
It is not only the result of the hard work put in by the 4MEPs. I am convinced that Joseph Muscat made a couple of telephone calls to his former colleagues in Brussels.
Not bad really. Two whole MEPs were needed to convince one MEP between them. They must have used tag-teaming, those cheeky buggers.
The ego-centric gall of this man is unbelievable.
Do the people deserve all this?
All the gullible ones do. Everyone else is just paying the price of democracy.
yes, because they voted him in
The ones who voted for him deserve even more – especially the switchers . Problem is we’re all getting lumped with it .
Oh yes they do deserve all this and much more. If they are gullible and stupid enough to trust someone as sinister and debauched as Joseph Muscat then they deserve it all.
I thought Joseph said he,s bringing talent to Malta, not arrogance.
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2014-01-20/news/chinese-billionaire-citizenship-applicant-panics-on-seeing-news-cameras-3736272897/
In this case the guy’s talents must be kept hidden for obvious reasons.
Maybe Joey meant hidden talents when he boasted about the prospective clients of Malta, the prostitute.
And I thought Joseph said he wanted us to be the best in Europe! Dream on baby!
Jozef, at 3.00, Zammit Lewis seems to be thinking, My gosh, our dumb supporters clap, even when our leader is telling them a barefaced lie.
Quite. All Muscat has been doing over these last few weeks is lie. He lied when he said he discussed this with the EU, he lied when he said that he had the backing of the Socialist MEPs, he lied when he said that the Vice President did not say what she did, when we all clearly heard her say it.
It is about time that someone calls him a liar to his face. Because that is what he is, a big fat liar.
And if I were his Ministers I’d be very careful, starting from Godfrey Farrugia, followed by Scicluna and Mallia, with Mizzi to follow.
Liars can never be trusted as they will say and do anything to defend their little space.
Any more cock-ups from the four above will see them lose his support as he will never defend anyone. He is too concerned with playing Prime Minister to let something like ethics and respect interfere.
@ Ghoxrin Punt
Until the sham self-destructs completely, there will always be those waiting to take the place of those back-stabbed, encouraged to participate in the act whilst they wait in line, the take-over prize as bait.
That’s the way the scam is fed.
I’m listening to the parliament debate at the moment. Why is it that:
1) the PL always have to promote the misconception that the PN think they have a divine right to rule;
2) the PL always needs to project the image of a bully who doesn’t “bow down” to anyone;
3) whenever members of the PL speak, they speak like witches and magicians casting a spell while they grind and torture their voice.
And this is just the beginning. Joseph Muscat thought he knew it all. The proper response to ‘noted, but no thanks’ is ‘take that, then, and that, and that, and that’. More pleasures yet to come.
Congratulations to Joanna Darmanin.
Finally, an example of meritocracy in practice.
Joseph Muscat is a complex person who needs help, lots of it. He “noted” the 90% against his scheme, but still says that he wants to go ahead it.
And he says that with the smirk or half-smile of a defiant child, not the serious expression of a grown-up making such a grave statement.
He also thinks that because he’s young (politically, because in reality he’s 40), he has the right to experiment and gamble with our lives and our feelings. I also get the unsettling feeling that he is playing out a role in the theatre of his own mind, starring in his own fiction of ‘great political leader’.
There is something really wrong there. Really wrong.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhnhkGRVtOE
Tonight in parliament, Joseph Muscat couldn’t bear listening to Simon Busuttil’s address…….he walked out
There you go Mr Prime Minister, now you’re IT.
Well did he really expect to be consulted on a mere position after what he just did?
Our beloved leader has deemed fit to let us know that there is an ex-Formula 1 champion among the ranks of those applying for a residence-free Maltese passport.
Such was the glee with which this announcement was made that one would be forgiven for thinking that this country was actually waiting for no other than an ex-Formula 1 champion’s application to solve its problems.
Once our beloved leader has been so forthcoming with his announcement perhaps he could be just as benevolent as to tell us how many applications were refused and on what grounds.
Is it that apart from the ex-Formula 1 champion there have been a good number of crooks who applied and which our beloved leader forgot to mention or is it that Henley & Partners are putting their endorsement where their money is and no application has failed the test?
But then, why all this fuss?
Why is it that in between engaging an EU Commission outcast as a consultant (on a strictly free-of-charge basis, that is) and engaging a World Bank black-listed person as a consultant too, our beloved leader can’t be trusted with issuing a residence-free Maltese passport solely to trustworthy applicants? Such ingratitude.
Our PM is a fat little coward. Keep it up, Simon, and you will drive him crazier than he is already. Congrats to Joanna Darmanin – our PM thinks you’re going to be a thorn in his (increasingly large) backside.
EU have learned much from J.Dalli’s saga . They do not thrust us anymore . We are on their red list .