Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1335955
By virtue of our status as an EU member state, our passports are no longer our own to sell (or, for that matter, give away for free)… which also means that – as far as the European Commission is concerned, at any rate – Malta can no longer compete with the UK by offering citizenship to third country nationals 12 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 3 FEBRUARY 2021 OPINION BUT before trying to answer that question (which I can do in a single word: 'noth- ing'), let's just pause for a second, to mar- vel at the staggering irony of the situation that is unfolding before our very eyes. The United Kingdom – you know: a country that attracted universal scorn and derision, after voting to leave the European Union in 2016… and which, according to widespread predictions, was supposed to have already reverted to primitive barbarism by now - is some- how managing to attract third-country nationals away from one of the EU's best-performing economies… specifi- cally, by offering them a better financial package than we can; and also, by of- fering UK citizenship to both the nurs- es themselves, and also their extended families. Not bad, for a country that was sup- posed to already be in the grips of a cat- aclysmic recession... and also, for a Brit- ish passport that was supposed to have become 'worthless' as a result of Brexit. And that's not all: apart from the fail- ure of the UK's economic disaster to ac- tually materialise, as predicted… the sit- uation on the other side of the channel is increasingly coming to resemble pre- cisely the sort of 'Third World hellhole' that Britain itself was meant to turn into (but clearly didn't). Let's face it: European citizens are lit- erally dying like flies… and despite all its presumptions of superiority, the EU itself seems powerless to do anything about it. In Germany alone – which just hap- pens to be the richest, most powerful EU member state – the COVID-19 death- toll has shot up from 7,560 last May, to 31,428 last December: a fourfold in- crease in just eight months. And granted: the corresponding statis- tics for Britain are arguably just as bad – though the same cannot be said for oth- er non-EU countries, such as Norway or Switzerland – yet strangely, post-Brexit Britain has somehow also managed to vaccinate considerably more of its citi- zens in the last month, than any of the EU's 27 member states (if not all of them put together). That's not an exaggeration, by the way. As of January 29, the United Kingdom had administered 11.67 vaccine doses per 100 people in the country: by far the highest percentage in Europe… and sec- ond only to the USA and China in the rest of the world. Malta (believe it or not) comes in sec- ond with 5.33 – a success story by Eu- ropean standards; but still less than half the UK's rate – though to be perfectly honest, I don't even want to look at the statistics for the rest of the EU. Italy – the worst-hit member state by far – has so far only managed to inoc- ulate 2.83 per 100 inhabitants, out of a total population of over 60 million. Germany has been even less successful, with a rate of only 2.65; and incredibly, France languishes towards the bottom of the European table, at a mere 1.82… a record beaten only by the Netherlands. Not to stress too fine a point on it: but these statistics belie the perception – so often (and so prematurely) bandied about in the wake of the Brexit referen- dum – that the European Union repre- sents some kind of 'ideal' political real- ity; and that a country like the United Kingdom must be 'mad' (or 'stupid') to even contemplate the possibility of leav- ing. Nor can it escape notice that the sup- posedly more advanced northern EU states – Germany, the Netherlands, France, Scandinavia, etc. – are actually faring far worse, in their vaccination ef- forts, than some of the supposedly lazi- er, less disciplined Mediterranean coun- tries… including Malta. And this is a far, far cry from the script that has been lovingly (and mindlessly) recited, both locally and in the rest of Europe, ever since we joined in 2004. It seems as though the events of the past few weeks have completely subverted all our previous perceptions about the EU. Clearly, it is not all that it was cranked up to be… and the question I asked in the headline seems to also outline exact- ly why, too. Let's go back to the point of departure. From its position outside the EU, the United Kingdom has so far successful- ly managed to poach a not-insignificant number of health workers from Malta… through a combination of better finan- cial conditions (of the kind it shouldn't be able to afford, according to predic- tions), and also the promise of UK cit- izenship (which was supposed to have lost all its value, after December 31, 2020). And while Malta, admittedly, cannot do very much about the first of those factors – money – there is, in theory, nothing stopping us from competing with the UK on the second. Indeed, 'offering Maltese citizenship' is one of the stratagems our country has consistently employed, ever since join- ing the EU, in order to bolster our eco- nomic growth. It's been called the 'Citi- zenship by Investment' programme; the 'Golden Passport' scheme; and a whole load of other, less flattering names be- side. But whatever you call it, it remains the thing it is: a 'commodification' of Mal- tese nationality, by a country that (let's be honest) has no other resources with which to actually compete with the rest of the EU… still less, the wider world be- yond. And, oh my, what a surprise. It is al- so the one economic tactic – along with sovereignty over our own taxation mod- el, naturally – that the EU has consist- ently been trying to stamp out of exist- ence for the past three years. Even now, as we speak - or, more accu- rately, as the UK outplays us at our own game – the European Commission is en- acting infringement procedures against Malta, specifically over the sale of Mal- tese passports. And the official argu- ments, made by the Commission in the European Court of Justice, include that 'nationality' is no longer an area that Malta actually has jurisdiction over. By virtue of our status as an EU mem- ber state, our passports are no longer our own to sell (or, for that matter, give away for free)… which also means that – as far as the European Commission is concerned, at any rate – Malta can no longer compete with the UK by offering citizenship to third country nationals: including all those foreign nurses, who are currently abandoning our country in droves to live and work in the UK. Britain, on the other hand, no longer has that problem. It left the EU, re- member? And oh look: the result of that 'mad', 'stupid' decision is that there is no longer any European Commission to breathe down Boris Johnson's neck… or to dictate to him what his country can or cannot do, to address the health cri- sis brought about by COVID-19. Small wonder, then, that EU mem- ber states have been so hard-hit by the pandemic… while countries unfettered by the EU's rules and regulations, have managed to fare so very much better. It is not so much a case that the UK's success has come about despite having left the EU… on the contrary: the UK is outperforming its EU counterparts– at the expense of our own country, please note – precisely because it is no longer a member-state… and can therefore take its own strategic decisions, without any muddled interference by a clueless, in- competent European Commission. And this, too, explains why Malta is currently doing nothing whatsoever to prevent a potentially fatal haemorrhage of health workers to another country. It is not, perhaps, because we don't want to compete with what the UK is offer- ing; it is more that we are simply una- ble to offer those nurses the same perks and conditions… because the European Commission will not allow us to. But of course, we will still cling to the illusion that the UK was 'mad' and 'stu- pid' to leave the EU: even while Britain is clearly reaping the benefits of that decision, at the cost of our own health service. It is, after all, a lot easier – and less painful - than facing the facts. Britain is poaching our nurses. What are we doing about it? Raphael Vassallo