Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1213458
11 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 23 FEBRUARY 2020 OPINION campaign of despoilment dur- ing the French occupation, be- tween 1798 and 1800. It is now housed in the Louvre; and just like Poland and Italy, Malta has been unsuccessfully trying to get it back ever since. So: do Germany and France al- so get to "return […] unlawfully removed cultural objects to their country of origin"? Or does that condition only apply to countries which have had the affrontery to actually leave the Union… while those that obediently remain get to keep all their ill-gotten treas- ures, with the full blessing and protection of the EU? I thought I'd ask, because this is after all the same European Un- ion that lectures us all about 'in- tegrity' and 'good governance'. Yet there it is, seeming to argue that cultural theft and/or appro- priation is perfectly acceptable… so long as the thieving country in question remains an EU mem- ber state. When a country chooses to leave the EU, however, it sud- denly seems to lose all the 'im- punity' it had enjoyed for centu- ries… which is just another way of saying that 'EU membership', at the end of the day, is really the equivalent of a protection racket: "Stay with us, and you will be free to carry on enjoying the fruits of all your historical crimes. Leave us, and…" Well, you can work the rest out for yourselves. I mean, honestly: and then they have the te- merity to call Malta a 'mafia state'… Meanwhile, there are plenty of other indica- tions that the EU changes its own stances towards individual countries, de- pending on whether or not they remain within its own fold. For as long as the UK was still an EU mem- ber state, the Europe- an Commission was adamantly opposed to Scottish independence. Ahead of the 2014 ref- erendum, former Com- mission President Barro- so even warned Scotland that it would have to reapply for EU mem- bership in the event of a 'Yes' vote. Today? A whole differ- ent ball-game. Now that the UK has well and tru- ly 'Brexited'… taking a reluctant Scotland with it… the doors of the EU have been flung wide open to the prospect of a newly independent Scot- land taking its rightful place as a fully-fledged member state: needless to add, without any talk of having to re-apply. Oh, and on the subject of 'newly independent countries', there's also the curious case of Kosovo: whose independence was immediately recognised by the EU, while similar bids for self-determination by other Eu- ropean regions remain less for- tunate to this day. What makes a region like Koso- vo eligible for independence… but not, say, Catalunya in Spain: which has its own language, its own cultural identity, and its own aspirations for self-rule? The only justification given at the time was that the people of Kosovo had been subjected to genocide during the war of the Balkans in the 1990s. But by that reasoning, the newly-pro- claimed (in 1948) state of Israel should really have been located in Germany, where the Holocaust took place. And besides, other European regions can make similar claims: including the Basque territories, which were the site of un- told atrocities during the Spanish Civil War (as attested by Picas- so's 'Guernica', which – never having been stolen – can still be admired in Madrid's Museo Reina Sofia). But these, I admit, are irrelevancies. The stark truth is that the EU recognised Koso- vo's bid for independ- ence – but no one else's – for the same reason that it changed its position on Scot- land after the Brexit referendum in 2016: i.e., because it was in the EU's own interest to do so… nothing more, nothing less. It's exactly the same with the Elgin Mar- bles, you know. The EU is not insisting on their return out of any sense of historical justice towards Greece… oth- erwise, it would be insisting on the restitution of ALL Europe's wealth in stolen treasure – in- cluding La Valette's sword – and not just Britain's. No, the real reason for the in- clusion of that clause is as glar- ingly visible as it is childishly petty: to make negotiations as difficult and awkward as possi- ble for the UK, in retaliation for its departure. This, I might add, at a time when the EU seems to be suffer- ing the consequences of Brexit far worse than the UK itself… being unable to reach an agree- ment over the next European budget, in the face of a €17 bil- lion shortfall caused by the lack of any contribution from Brit- ain. In other words, it is a classic case of 'lover's revenge'. The EU is behaving precisely like the aggrieved party in a messy di- vorce… throwing at its estranged partner literally everything it can possibly lay its hands on, in the hope that some of it might actually hurt. But hey! Far be it from me to get involved in an acrimonious tiff between two divorcing part- ners. There's only one thing that really interests me in all this… that it creates the perfect op- portunity for us to finally get La Valette's sword back (without even having to declare war on France, either. Fancy that…) It's very simple, too. All it would take is to convince the British government to accede to the EU's demand, and give the Elgin Marbles back to Greece… on condition that all other EU member states do likewise, and return all their plundered patri- mony to its rightful owners. That way, Greece gets its Marbles back… we get La Val- ette's sword… Poland gets back everything that was stolen from it by the Nazis… and hey presto! Everybody's happy again. Well, everyone except the Brit- ish, perhaps (but they'll have lost their marbles by then anyway… so they'll never even realise what happened). The EU is not insisting on their return out of any sense of historical justice towards Greece [but] to make negotiations as difficult and awkward as possible for the UK, in retaliation for its departure