Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/240181
21 maltatoday, SUNDAY, 12 JANUARY 2014 w? Something seems to have happened to both parties since the 2003 EU referendum – and looked at again, it is not at all clear whose side either party is actually on anymore old, for their spouse, and his or her spouse's parents and grandparents, for between €25,000 and €50,000 per head". "The newcomers will have the right to freely travel, reside and work in all 28 EU states. They will also buy the right to enter 69 non-EU countries, including the US, with minimal security checks under Malta's visa-free travel pacts." The EU Observer helpfully adds that the worst-case scenario would be "a crime, or even an act of terrorism, committed on EU or US territory by a newly-minted Maltese national": suggesting that the scrutiny applied by scheme administrators Henley & Partners will not suffice to ward off these and other threats. (Side-note: Henley is the same company appointed by the Nationalist Party to administer its own foreign-investor scheme just a couple of years ago… even though Simon Busuttil now thinks the British firm is perfectly capable of suddenly disappearing with all Malta's hard-earned cash stashed away in its back pocket, never to be seen again.) Even without prior knowledge of the EU Observer's widelyknown bias, its coverage of the Maltese passport scheme is clearly calculated to inflict as much damage as possible, not to the Labour Party or even to Malta… but to the European Union . It is not so much an attack on the scheme itself (the same article even notes that other countries do the same, only with more restrictions) but rather on one of the central pillars of the EU's identity: its principle of freedom of movement. Thanks to this freedom, European citizens may find themselves having to share their lebensraum with (shock, horror) non-European nationals… like we don't have enough of those already, etc. etc. Both the Mail and The Telegraph articles make much the same point: but also highlighting (not without a certain relish) the European Commission's powerlessness to intervene in an issue that may have wider effects across the entire EU. The Telegraph leads with "Malta approves selling citizenship for €650,000 to non-EU applicants, giving people work and residency rights in the 28-member bloc". The Daily Mail says exactly the same thing, only with its trademark CAPITAL LETTERS: "Malta to sell citizenship for £500,000 with buyers allowed to live and work ANYWHERE in the European Union." By this point, a few of the central arguments should begin to sound familiar. This is not the first time we have been invited to consider nightmare scenarios in which our own country would be swamped by visitors who could come here by the thousand, buying up our properties, stealing our jobs (and our women), and generally threatening our livelihoods and subverting our sense of national identity… all because of the harebrained schemes of foreign countries. Is it starting to ring a bell? Yes, that's right. It's the same army of Sicilian hairdressers that was supposed to have invaded us at precisely midnight on April 1 2004, the moment we were admitted as EU members. It's the same throngs of loose Eastern European women who were supposed to (and in fact did) come here in full force to make off with every Maltese woman's husband in one fell swoop. And let us not forget the army of tall, muscular Scandinavian men who were likewise supposed to sweep all our women off their feet and cart them off into the Viking sunset… at least according to one former Valletta councillor, who must be bitterly disappointed to discover that her fears were actually unjustified. The circumstances may not mirror each other precisely, but the primal fears instinctively stoked by both these scaremongering tactics are indistinguishable. Foreign objections to Malta's passport scheme come almost exclusively from Eurosceptic sources, and hinge almost exclusively on an ancestral fear of suspicious foreigners (Who knows? They might be terrorists) settling down and opening shop next door. And what is that, if not the exact same rhetoric used by the Labour Party under Alfred Sant, in a bid to frighten the electorate away from EU accession before 2003? All that remains is for David Casa and Roberta Metsola Tedesco Triccas to use their allotted time in Wednesday's debate to echo exactly the same kind of wildly alarmist rumours that had once dominated past Labour mass meetings… and hey presto! The transmogrification will be complete. But they are not the only ones to have been transformed. Even locally the same passport debate is beginning to increasingly resemble the loony patriotic rightwing rhetoric that infests Eurosceptic thinking, and which lies (literally) at the heart of newspapers such as The Daily Mail. One former PN candidate was even heard asking if 'newly-minted Maltese nationals' (to stick to the EU Observer's description) would be allowed to vote in elections or even contest elections: forgetting that both the right to vote and to run for office are an integral part of citizenship in any country… and attempting to strip citizens of those rights would be a gross human rights violation. Elsewhere Simon Busuttil himself is on record saying he would revoke all citizenships granted under this scheme… little realising (or perhaps deliberately ignoring) Article 15.2 of the Universal Human Rights Charter, which specifically states that "No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality..." This is the precisely the kind of overzealous, tub-thumping, xenophobic garbage I would expect from the ragtag assortment of vaguely eccentric rightwing organisations that make up the EP's Eurosceptic bloc, and which now seem to be the PN's allies. I certainly do not expect it from representatives of the party which ushered us into Europe only 10 years ago, and which had rubbished similar claims when they were made by an increasingly desperate Labour Opposition before the 2003 referendum. But like I said earlier: funny things happen to people who go in for politics…