“EPP Group denounces Malta’s cash-for-passports scheme”
The European People’s Party Group in the European Parliament has just released this statement:
The EPP Group has expressed deep concern over the new Maltese citizenship scheme because it automatically entails the outright sale of EU citizenship as a whole without any residency requirement. “Such an outright sale of EU citizenship undermines the mutual trust upon which the Union is built”, said the EPP Group Spokeswoman in the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, Véronique Mathieu-Houillon MEP.
“I am deeply shocked by the decision of the Maltese Government to sell passports without even a residency requirement and I wonder what they want to achieve with such a reform: an open-door policy to money laundering?”, said Ms Mathieu-Houillon.
“Not only does it not bring any benefits to the Maltese citizens, it also undermines European citizenship.”
“European citizenship entails rights and duties. It materialises our common project and it is one of the pillars of the European Union. European citizenship is not just another commodity that can be sold. The Maltese Government is betraying the mutual trust enjoyed between the European Member States, something that we have been trying to build for many years”, she continued.
Maltese MEP, Roberta Metsola, said: “Rights are not for sale. They cannot be bought and sold. To be European should not depend on how deep your pockets are. The selling of citizenship for mere cash dilutes the true value and worth of the citizenship we are so proud of. Each citizenship sold in this cheap fashion is an impingement on the rights of each and every one of our citizens.”
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People should be marching on Valletta demanding Muscat’s resignation.
Will you organize it?
All four Labour MEPs are showing major strain, as their Socialist colleagues distanced themselves. The session made brilliant watching. Every MEP, except one sole Dutch expressed disgust and urged the Commission to take action.
This thing won’t go away.
So Marlene tried the tiny Malta approach in Spock’s uniform.
Attard Montaldo implied the Commissioner should have addressed him in Maltese, and the plane ticket bummer lost her chance to speak.
How ironic that when I hit the archive button by mistake, the topmost article was e one entitled ‘At last, somebody senior finally puts a rocket under the prats’.
Nothing directly related, but the title is very appropriate to this situation. Told, time and time again that the whole bloody thing was a completely stupid idea, but they still went ahead.
Dd they really think that calling people traitors, telling them that they were not being positive, that other countries were doing it, when they weren’t, by the way, that they would get away with it?.
I said it time and again, that if Labour came to power, we wouldn’t have to leave, because we’d be kicked out.
I’ve already told someone who remarked about my passport, that they could have it for free. It really is worthless now isn’t it?
prosit Roberta Metsola for the good work and for defending our interests!
And there you have it. I’m pretty sure that I will get no benefit from the EUR 1 billion the government is saying it will make.
It is already spending it to employ its blue-eyed boys, those same ones who are assiduously defending the indefensible on Facebook. But I have already started feeling the negative effects.
Try to go abroad and deal with some other minimally current events-aware EU citizens and see the barely concealed contempt which most have for the scheme and the government for dreaming it up.
The defence taken up by Marlene Mizzi in the EP is that each member state is entitled to regulate its citizenship rights, punto e basta.
If that is all there is to it, other member states can, within a few months, devise an even cheaper cash over the counter citizenship model than ours. This whole idea was a loser from the start.
How short sighted Labour is and has always been.
http://maltatoday.com.mt/en/newsdetails/news/national/The-bloodbath-of-European-indignation-20140115
I don’t know how voting will be tomorrow but, on the basis of tonight’s debate, I would say that Kurt Farrugia and Glen Bedingfield have wasted their time going to Strasbourg.
The speeches of the Socialists and the Greens were indistinguishable from those of the EPP members. They all mentioned Malta by name.
Apart from, predicatbly, the PL members, the only speakers who did not attack Malta (but did not defend it) were the Freedom Party representative and the Dutch ex-Freedom Party, now Independent, Van den Stoep.
Farrugia and Bedingfield are physical confirmation that Labour isn’t fit for purpose and Muscat doesn’t know what he’s doing.
Yes, the whole Labour package is an embarrassment to Malta, including the physical appearance of ‘our’ representatives.
Malta’s new currency: Joseph Muscat’s EU passport (JM-EU-PASS).
Major benefit of Joseph Muscat’s EU passport: fixed exchange rate with the EURO at:
1 JM-EU-PASS = EURO 650,000.
Exchange rates with other currencies may vary.
Interest rate on JM-EU-PASS investments is at the national interest rate.
Joseph Muscat must be thinking that he is still working with Alfred Mifsud at Crystal Finance, selling investments.
Why and why hasnt anyone brought about the argument that this scheme is intrinsically wrong, just because NOT one of the European states has done it this way.
If what labour is proposing is good , I am sure it would have been adopted by one and all , but no , it is disgusting, and undermines the very security of the EU.
What baffled me for a while is how in the hell Labour didn’t see this coming from the very beginning.
It was so obvious at the outset that such a hare-brained scheme would hurt Malta’s image in the EU that it was almost impossible for me to believe that they did not see it coming, even following the initial stream of negative press coverage.
Which is why I don’t believe it.
Joseph Muscat is an amoral lowlife, but he’s not stupid and he’s a schemer. There is no way in hell that he didn’t anticipate the backlash against the scheme. Is it possible that some European socialist buddy never cornered Cuschieri at some elevator to give him a piece of his mind about the matter?
I think that this scheme is nothing but a conscious attack on EU solidarity and values. This, with the bluster and bravado in the irregular migration coffee-smelling episode, was carefully calculated to distance Malta from the rest of the EU.
We should expect more episodes such as this from the government until Malta is so reviled in Brussels that Muscat will be able to legitimately say that we are better off breaking ties with the EU. At the same time the anti-EU rhetoric will be progressively turned up until most people will not want to stay anyway.
Does anybody put it past him? Does anybody believe that the bitter pill he had to swallow with EU membership isn’t still stuck in his gullet? He would see taking Malta out of the EU as his greatest triumph – the ultimate two finger salute to all those who dared to defy him. The mother of all “hu go fik” moments.
[Daphne – The only problem with this scenario is the original premiss: that Malta is selling EU passports to bring about this scenario. Unless the sale of passports is a very real scam (that is, one in which the buyers are intentionally being scammed), that doesn’t make sense. Otherwise, what you are going to have is 1,800 applicants plus their families who will have bought EU passports only to discover that they are nothing but Maltese passports. What are the consequences then?]
The consequences would be many, not only for those 1,800 applicants and their families, but mostly for the future of the real Maltese citizens.
But we are looking at a five-year time-span at least here. This is just the beginning of the anti-EU campaign. Besides we haven’t seen the actual contract, have we? For all we know there’s some kind of escape clause just in case that happens.
But even if there isn’t, do you think he’d care as long as he gets his vindication? It’s not like Labour hasn’t got a history of doing this kind of thing.
Daphne, you asked what the consequence would be if the passports sold eventually became Maltese passports, the answer is quite straight forward, nothing.
The premiss is simple: on paper these people are buying Maltese citizenship which entails them also to EU citizenship.
If Malta leaves the EU, what are these people going to do, sue the government? They can’t, as they bought Maltese citizenship. It’s not the government’s problem that the situation changed.
In a simpler analogy, somebody buys a villa in Madliena to enjoy living in the countryside, but over the years the place gets over developed to the point where that villa is surrounded by flats and maisonettes.
The property value drops, and the main original aim for buying the place (the countryside) is no longer there. You can’t exactly sue the vendor or the government.
This is exactly Joey’s scheme. It’s a scam, just like the rest of his so called “moviment”.
Daphne, Joseph Muscat could take Malta out of the EU but retain Schengen status. The new passport holders will be satisfied, and his lifelong Mintoffian dream will be realised.
Absolutely everything our government has done since March 2013 has been anti-EU. Eventually, EU sentiment will turn against Malta to the point where Muscat will pretend to sulk, and then withdraw Malta’s membership because of the “national interest”.
The only way to prevent this is to elect Simon Busuttil as PM in 2018. Every damned election since 1998 has been a referendum on EU membership. Our pundits may think otherwise, but they’re all fools.
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2014-01-15/news/government-to-carry-on-with-citizenship-scheme-says-it-confirms-with-eu-rules-3695607810/
Basta ‘Gvern li jisma’.’
I’ve said it before: If Joseph Muscat does not know what he’s doing then it’s scary. However, if he does, then, I believe, it’s a million times more frightening.
Can the EU expel Malta from Schengen if “what the heck” goes ahead with the scheme irrespective of the outcome of the negative vote against it?