Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/823773
Opinion 29 maltatoday, SUNDAY, 14 MAY 2017 Your consumer rights are our priority. We have confirmed co-operation from national agencies to ensure the safeguarding and enhancements of all your privileges as a consumer. YOU ASKED US FOR ENFORCED CONSUMER PROTECTION LAWS WE DELIVERED Putting you at the heart of Europe POST CREDIT CARD justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail.' At a glance it is hard to see how that can be made to apply to Malta's corruption issues. Whatever you make of those, they are just not 'fundamental human rights' concerns. But for argument's sake, let us extend the definition to also include maladministration. It can be done: 'democracy' is one of the values, and we can all see it being eroded before our eyes by corruption. But then: which one of the 28 member states is entirely free of maladministration? Why, in a word, should Malta be singled out for censure according to Article 7... but not Luxembourg, a notorious tax evasion haven in the heart of the EU? Or Italy, for that matter? Or (while it's still a member) the UK... which Roberto Saviano, author of 'Gomorrah', recently described in an interview as the 'most corrupt country on earth'? It's not as though we invented money-laundering, you know. And from the outset, I argued (with a friend) that it would be highly ironic if Malta's PM had to resign over money- laundering allegations (which, with respect to Muscat, remain at this stage unproven)... while the President of the European Union is Jean Claude Juncker: a man with a long history of exploiting his position – both as Luxembourg's Prime Minister, and as EC President – to facilitate the tax evasion/ laundering of hundreds of millions of euros. Yet the same European Parliament which approved Juncker as Commission President, even after the Luxleaks scandal – while also trying to block Leo Brincat for the Court of Auditors, merely because he voted for an embattled Cabinet colleague in a vote of confidence – is as I write actively seeking to derail Malta's election campaign, and turn into a European Court verdict on Muscat (who – whatever you think of him politically, is Malta's PM and therefore represents Malta in the eyes of the world). Sorry, but I don't recognise the moral authority of the European Parliament – or any comparable European institution at the moment – to be an arbiter in this, or any other corruption case. Clean up your own countries' corruption first... then maybe we'll talk about Malta. But that is a small consideration, when you take on board the full implications of Article 2. Let us now look at REAL fundamental human rights concerns. Europe's treatment of migrants, for instance. In recent years, we have seen boatloads of hundreds of men, women and children left to drown at sea, because individual EU member states couldn't decide whose responsibility it was to rescue them. We have seen refugee camps – in prosperous European countries, mind – that are reminiscent of Soviet style Gulags in Siberia. Judge Europe's treatment of migrants according to the Lisbon Treaty, and all 28 member states would have to be suspended from the Council. Europe's entire, concerted response to the migration crisis was military in nature. It was all about patrolling borders, bombing boats at sea (!), and building larger and more secure prison compounds to keep a 'minority' of unlucky people from contaminating or infecting some 'European dream' or other. Not once did I see the European Union exerting its considerable inf luence and resources to uphold its own mission statement: "respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities." Nor did I ever hear anyone mention Article Seven before now. Why only now, anyway? And why mention it only in connection with a purely political issue, and not with a much more grave and serious issue – engulfing the whole of Europe – which literally translates into a graveyard of corpses each year? 'Values', it seems, are just as f lexible as musical tastes. So if you'll excuse me, in future I'm going to take the laughably contrived Eurovision Song Contest just slightly more seriously, than a 'European Union' that has made hypocrisy its middle name. We have seen refugee camps in prosperous European countries that are reminiscent of Soviet style Gulags in Siberia