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maltatoday, SUNDAY, 3 MAY 2015 24 Opinion Letters Turin's holy shroud Raphael Vassallo continued With reference to J. Guillaumier's letter "The bogus relic", surely I am not the one to rebut his tech- nical and scientific knowledge about the Turin shroud. However, my first two general impressions about it are that it has not yet been universally acclaimed as a genuine relic and that already throughout the very first cen- turies after the resurrection of Christ, his funeral "sudarium" was conserved and venerated by the Christians. Because of space reasons, I can- not pass more information other than that numerous studies and researches have also supported the thesis that the shroud is authentic. Mr Guillaumier had already written about dubious relics on 31 August, 2014. Part of my reply, inter alia, went as follows: "Be- cause of the difficult y of proving them to be certainly spurious, the church does not discontinue such devotion. Even though relics may be in fact false, God has often seen fit to reward devotion paid them." And that just about sums it all. John Azzopardi Zabbar One year on is the time to do a European reality check. A time to analyse our Euro- pean membership and performance. Is Malta an active participant in the enlarged process? Are government depart- ments handling the process well? Should the social partners be more active in the EU process? Are we concentrating too much on ac- quiring funds and too little on maximising the opportunities open to us? Are we managing to apply for funds in time? In short, are we being reactive and just waiting for opportunities to fall onto our lap? Early days perhaps, yet the absence of visible deliverables and the lack of a clear communications strategy making Europe better known to the average citizen is more than obvious. Following May 1 2004; a new political landscape has started being drawn. Managing this new reality is crucial. The Labour party in an exercise of real politik barring a few internal dissenters has readjusted its policy to the new European reality. Countless directives and regulations have entered our statute book. The European project has brought changes opportunities and pain. On a positive note Europe has heralded a number of freedoms introducing the liberal transfer of movement and capital. On paper the Maltese can now live and work abroad, supposedly pay cheaper European university fees, freely transfer their hard earned savings abroad and benefit from medical treat- ment abroad. Throughout Europe all Maltese are to be treated as equals to any other Euro- pean. On a political level the country is now anchored in the European family of democracies, which ensures that no abuses of our democratic rights should ever take place again. This gives any individual the right to lodge complaints in European for and enhances our democratic safety net and credentials. No mean achievement. On the economic plain, Europe perceived as the trigger for structural reform has been a standard setter not without bouts of pain. The standards set in health and safety, car regulations and environmental care all have long-term positive benefits. Some measures introduced, however, have left a bitter taste and increased busi- ness costs at a time of economic stagnation. Too many economic reforms have been introduced in too short a time and in an in- sensitive way. Caution would have advised a softer European landing yet the regulations and directives introduced have had a crash landing effect. The EU has undoubtedly put pressure on Malta to reduce its deficit, and the increase in the VAT rate to eighteen percent. And the introduction of eco-taxation, the removal of holidays falling on weekends and the imposition of the surcharge on utilities were all done without winning the hearts and minds of the electorate and to make matters worse have been linked with European Union accession. Any reforms that lead to making Malta's economy more competitive constitute a positive direct result of EU entry and are in keeping with the new reality that fiscal policy is now EU driven with Brussels monitoring and benchmarking our per- formance. Dr Gonzi's room for manoeuvre is lim- ited. Our economy, fiscal and monetary policy is under constant watch by European structures. We are now accountable economically to Europe and can be rebuffed and publicly censured by Europe if we do not keep to set and agreed guidelines. Ecofin is fast becoming a household word. This imposed fiscal discipline is a positive development. After all Maltese politicians of either colour have been too willing to keep sugaring the electorate. The reasons for joining were always primarily political especially after the abuses our politi- cians. It was always clear to all independent minded persons that economically joining Eu- rope would result in immedi- ate pain and long term gain. In fairness the future benefits were packaged in the rallying call ghall-uliedna (for the benefit of our children). Our economy is not competitive and in addressing this problem pain is inevitable. Europe however does create opportuni- ties, which we may not be sufficiently aware of. We are now operating in a market of four hundred million people and no longer four hundred thousand. The country has qualified for Objective One status. Yet even this achievement was very badly sold by government, allowing it to be tripped up by GWU media claims that the agreement was already in the bag. Dr Gonzi is still in search of a rallying call. Lacking a big idea like independence, a republic and Europe, it is finding it dif- ficult to win hearts and minds around its political programme of modernising the country. Disraeli had said 'change is inevitable in a changing society, change is constant'. The country is finding it difficult to operate in our changing environment subject to strong competitive pressures. It is also finding it difficult to compete with the growing economies of the Far East. Dr Gonzi must put in place the climate that enables our businesses to compete. Getting and focusing on our deficit is cor- rect, but equal emphasis must be placed on growth. We all presumed that growth would be inevitable once we joined Europe. We were assured that enhanced trade, foreign direct investment flows and access to EU funds would be immediate. We are much wiser now in realising that the opening up of markets does not result in instant growth. The key to growth is competition and government has a role to play by minimis- ing costs to business which regrettably have increased since membership. One year down the line, managing change remains the biggest challenge facing our society. The European experience Editorial • 01 May 2005 the human trafficking network that brought them to Malta. The entire procedure is therefore very clearly known to all who care to look. This also implies that all that money, all those untold millions pumped into African bank accounts held by human traffickers all over the continent, is entirely traceable. But is anybody looking for it? Of course not! We all heard the press statement following the European Council of Ministers' meeting last week. They're not following the money. They're following the boats. This, it seems, is the grand strategy adopted by the European Union to counter this vast, deadly and ultra-monetised criminal organisation, present practically all over Africa. Sink a few boats in the Mediterranean here and there. After a while, they'll all get tired of buying new ones, and give up... It doesn't seem to have occurred to any Prime Minister of any European member state that a criminal network with access to untold millions of US dollars, stowed away in banks all over Africa, can probably afford to keep buying boats for a long, long time. But hey, sinking boats is a lot easier than cracking down on a monumental money-laundering operation involving several distant and possibly uncooperative African countries. In fact, you can do it without even venturing beyond your own doorstep. And it's kind of fun, too. It's like playing 'Battleships', but with real vessels instead of crosses drawn on paper… Following the money trail, on the other hand, would involve a lot of work. And as we all saw in the Falcone case, it is work that might lead investigators to some very uncomfortable conclusions regarding who, exactly, is profiting from this harrowing cycle of extortion and murder on an inconceivable scale. Perhaps, then, it is time to start asking ourselves why there is so much reluctance to pursue this matter at source. Could it be, perhaps, for the same reason that governments and international organisations have always been singularly reluctant to probe banks for illegalities? This is after all not exactly the first time that international organisations and governments have seemingly turned a blind eye to collaboration between respectable banks and criminal organisations. In 2012, it was revealed that HSBC had accepted deposits running into hundreds of millions of dollars raised by Mexican drug-dealing operations. The bank was eventually forced to pay a $1.9 billion settlement when a US court found it guilty of a "blatant failure" to implement anti- money laundering controls. HSBC's profits for that year amounted to $13.9 billion: more than 12 times the price it paid for a crime that would land lesser mortals in jail for most of their remaining years. Likewise, in both the US sub- prime mortgage crisis of 2007, and the more recent European banking crisis of 2009, vast sums of taxpayers' money were diverted to bail out banks that had also 'failed to implement' some of the most basic financial controls necessitated by all major international jurisdictions regarding the banking sector. The pattern seems to endlessly repeat itself: banks f lout local and international regulations with impunity; and when caught, they are either let off with a gentle slap on the wrist, or actually rewarded for their transgressions. In the case of untold millions deposited in African banks through kidnapping and extortion, we have merely taken the same pattern to the next logical level. Not only do we pretend not to notice it is even happening, but we deliberately settle on a hopelessly misplaced 'alternative target' – human trafficker's boats – to reinforce the impression of a studious, concerted attempt to protect the real criminals. All that remains to complete the cycle of historical repetition is for a latter-day Giovanni Falcone to actually follow the money trail – to accumulate the evidence, expose the leadership hierarchy of the criminal gangs, and lay bare all the 'legitimate' transactions that permitted their operations to run smoothly… and what would happen then, I wonder? In all probability, the new Falcone would suffer the same fate as the old one… and all the accumulated evidence would likewise be deliberately ignored. And like the Sicilian mafia, the human traffickers will continue to ply their hideous trade, inconvenienced only by the loss of a few boats here and there. But at least, European countries will still be able to say they are 'doing something' about a situation which inevitably becomes more lethal with each passing year. And that's the really important thing, right? Continued from page 22 Send your letters to: The Editor, MaltaToday, MediaToday Ltd. 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