Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/380554
Opinion 21 maltatoday, SUNDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER 2014 shrinking environmental Europe's heavy dependence on finite fossil fuels is in itself environmentally unsound, or a foremost cause for concern among European citizens, or anything like that. It is merely because the EU's present energy policy involves depending on countries we may find ourselves at war with next week. Everything else is secondary. Yet another area of concern to emerge from Juncker's proposals – little to do with the environment this time – is his extraordinary response to policy areas where individual member states have kicked up something of a fuss in recent years. Karmenu Vella is not the only nominee to have raised eyebrows across Europe. Juncker's decision to hand the financial services sector to Britain's Commissioner-designate, Jonathan Hill, has also been questioned… as has his somewhat more alarming suggestion that the UK may be allowed to 'renegotiate its accession treaty' on his watch. It is no secret that the UK is currently reconsidering its membership of the EU: the possibility of a 2017 referendum is in fact being discussed as we speak. British Prime Minister David Cameron has been accused (by former Commissioners) of 'keeping his hand on the door-handle'… in other words, using this threat of a British pull-out as leverage to secure more concessions from Brussels. This might sound vaguely familiar to those of us who remember Malta's tortuous road to EU membership in 2003. Questions such as 'can individual member states renegotiate their accession treaties' were paramount back then. Opposition leader Alfred Sant had built his entire campaign platform around that very possibility. Yet at the time, the idea was consistently and roundly shot down by one visiting Commissioner after another. Even after accession – and yes, even under the Gonzi administration – efforts were made to renegotiate specific aspects of Malta's commitments under the accession treaty. Former Prime Minister Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, founder of the euro-sceptic 'Front Maltin Inqumu', has consistently argued that the entire accession treaty should be renegotiated from scratch. The reply has always been the same: "No way, José." More recently, Resources Minister George Pullicino said in 2009 that if the proposed wind farm on Sikka l-Bajda failed to generate the desired levels of power (in actual fact it failed to ever even materialise, but anyway…), Malta may have to renegotiate its 2020 targets "due to the size and specific circumstances of Malta, including deep water depths". Yet again, the Commission's response was that no such renegotiation would be permitted. But that, it seems, applies only to Malta. When Britain wants to renegotiate its accession treaty, suddenly it becomes a top priority for the incoming Juncker Commission. Last April – when Britain's prime minister tried unsuccessfully to sabotage his ascent to the presidency – Juncker told Cameron that "as commission president, I will work for a fair deal for Britain". "No reasonable politician could neglect we have to find solutions for the political concerns in the UK," he said… significantly adding: "We have to do this to keep UK in." Of course, a similar 'fair deal' for Malta was and still is out of the question. In all areas where EU directives manifestly work out to Malta's disadvantage – for instance, immigration – we have always been told to just lump it. But then again, unlike Britain we didn't exactly have 'our hand on the door-handle'. And this same general pattern – i.e., of simply caving in to blackmail - underpins all Jean-Claude Juncker's other odd little Commission nominations, too. It goes like this: Britain threatens to leave the EU – citing the need to protect its financial services sector – so the Commission president hands responsibility for financial services to the Brits… and even offers them a freshly renegotiated package of the kind that has always been denied to us. Likewise, Hungary's ultra- conservative rightwing government falls foul of Europe's standards of civil rights… and what does Juncker do? He gives the civil rights portfolio to Hungary, of course. Meanwhile France moans and groans about how the EU's economic direction has been monopolised by Germany… so the French Commissioner gets to direct European economic policy from now on. In all cases the pattern is the same: if you complain enough about it, you'll eventually get to regulate the entire sector. And it applies perfectly to Vella's nomination too: Malta constantly tries to twist European law to the advantage of its own hunters and trappers; so of course it makes perfect sense to not only give Malta's Commissioner full control of European wildlife protection… but to even ask Karmenu Vella to 'upgrade' the Wild Birds Directive in order to make it a 'more modern piece of European legislation. You know, the same piece of European legislation that Vella's home government has done nothing but twist, manipulate and deform since winning that election back in March 2013. This, then, is the direction the European Union is poised to take under its new Commission presidency. At which point, I think it is only legitimate to ask if the EU taking shape before our eyes is in fact the same EU we joined back in 2004. It sure as hell doesn't look that way to me… If Juncker's Commission is approved by the European Parliament, it would mean that the EU's only democratically elected institution will have sanctioned a general downgrade of the standards of European environment and wildlife protection The Maltese EU Commissioner is to 'upgrade' the Wild Birds Directive