Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1285850
10 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 6 SEPTEMBER 2020 Raphael Vassallo OPINION Looks like we joined the wrong European Union by mistake… TELL you what: let's play a lit- tle game. I'll reproduce excerpts from a report published recently in the European Council's For- eign Relations website – with the name of a particular EU member state blacked out – and you try and guess the unidentified coun- try. Ready? Here goes: "Thousands of people have taken to the streets across [XXXX] in recent weeks [to demand] systemic change on three fronts: the fight against corruption and the mafia links of those in power; reforms to the judiciary; and freedom of speech. "In the EU, [XXXX] is the highest-scoring country in terms of corruption according to Transparency International […] Over the years, successive scandals have called into ques- tion its [judicial] independence. Civil society organisations in [XXXX] have long campaigned for judicial reforms… "In comparison to other EU member states, the 2020 World Press Freedom Ranking ranks [XXXX] in 111th place, far be- hind all other EU countries but also behind many African or Asian countries…. And lastly: "If [XXXX] re- mains so far behind on funda- mental questions like freedom of speech, rule of law, and an independent judiciary, this is damaging for the EU as a whole…" OK, by now you will probably have guessed that our mystery EU member state cannot be Malta: if nothing else, because a simple Google search will reveal that our country places 81st – not 111th – in the 2020 World Press Freedom Rank- ings. Likewise, we are ranked 54th in terms of Transparen- cy International's Corruption Perceptions Index: a good 11 places above the bottom of the European table, which is occu- pied by... Oops! Almost gave the game away there, didn't I? But no matter: you've probably worked it out already, just by following the international news over the past few weeks. Yes, folks, the answer is in- deed Bulgaria…. even though (let's face it) if you filled in those blanks with 'Malta' in- stead, the chances are that no- body would even have noticed. After all, the list of rule-of- law complaints against Bulgar- ia – 'corruption'; 'mafia links of those in power'; 'judicial inde- pendence'; 'freedom of speech', etc. – is not merely similar to our own array of institutional problems; it is IDENTICAL. And in case you were won- dering, that also extends to the issue of politically-motivated, mafia-style murders. Without in any way dimin- ishing the horror of what hap- pened here in October 2017… let's just say that Bulgaria's re- cent history of political assassi- nations would once again place that country far higher than ours, in a hypothetical 'Euro- pean Capital of Political Mur- ders' list. Last July, New Eastern Europe reported that: "Between 2003 and 2018, Bulgaria witnessed a series of high-profile murders: famous businessmen, an estab- lished prosecutor, an impor- tant director at Bulgaria's Tax Authority, and a key expert witness in a public trial on ille- gal wiretapping by [Prime Min- ister] Borisov's government, were all shot dead." The article adds: "These mur- ders were not solved by the authorities, and it is doubtful they were properly investigat- ed either." It seems, then, that Malta is not exactly the only EU mem- ber state where the rule of law has been undermined by sys- temic corruption, nepotism, institutional paralysis, organ- ised crime… and even murder. And yet, it also seems that Malta is the only EU state to ever actually get called out over any of these issues. For just as there are overwhelming simi- larities between the two coun- tries' political landscapes… there are also a few little differ- ences here and there. One striking difference is that where the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia did eventual- ly lead to resignation of Joseph Muscat last January, and the collapse of his government – in part, it must be said, due to overwhelming pressure by the EU – Bulgaria's Prime Minis- ter Boyko Borisov is still very much in place today. Not only that, but where Malta has been consistently lambasted, humiliated, con- demned, and abundantly defe- cated upon by practically every single European institution you care to name – the European Commission, the European Parliament, individual heads of state, the Council of Europe, etc. – Europe's response to the Bulgarian situation has so far been… Um… … well, to be fair, you can't exactly say it's been 'non-ex- istent'. Because this is the truly bizarre (and woefully unjust) part of the whole equation. Fact is that the European Union has not merely failed to condemn Borisov's govern- ment, in the same way as it so utterly eviscerated Malta over the past three years… but it has openly and unambiguously supported the Bulgarian Prime Minister all the way. Take our old friend Manfred Weber, for instance: the cur- rent President of the European People's Party, which is also the single largest political bloc in the European Parliament. You will not surely not need me to remind of the many, many times Weber took Mal- ta to task over corruption and institutionalised criminality in recent years. As recently as June 19, he even told a local in- terviewer that the situation in Malta – where government of- ficials had been 'implicated in organised crime' – was 'unique' in the European bloc. Malta is not exactly the only EU member state where the rule of law has been undermined by systemic corruption, nepotism, institutional paralysis, organised crime… and even murder