Social projects

In Europe and outside it, funds of many billions get created to invest in commercial projects launched by individuals and companies.

In this way, encouragement and help are provided to those who are attempting to run projects that could be economically and financially worthwhile, but which need support to succeed.

Such strategies to promote investments have had many successes (though they have also registered failures).

The claim has been made: Why cannot the same method be extended to “social” projects, in sectors like the environment, health and the care of disabilities, among others?

The problem here is that social projects, by definition, can hardly be considered as tools for profit making. So how can one lend them money or invest in them as if they were operating commercially?

However, more and more models are being found how to do so, and this with the participation of banks and of NGOs who have long been active in the social field. It makes great sense to continue with this approach and indeed give it greater importance. In doing so, there should be allowed no weakening of the state’s guarantee that measures of social solidarity towards all citizens must remain in place, free from any threat of being sidelined because they cannot be rendered “viable”.

Euro reforms

On paper, there is wide agreement that the eurozone needs to implement reforms that would enable future challenges to be met. Now, such reforms have remained pending for years, as for instance: the setting up of a banking union and of a capital markets union (Europe-wide); the introduction of a European scheme to guarantee deposits in banks; the consolidation of a European fund meant to underpin banks that come close to a collapse... Moreover, other proposals to establish a budget for the eurozone, as well as possibly its own finance ministry for the latter, have not progressed an inch...

In all these areas, time after time we got reports presented, one after the other, by all chairpersons of the European institutions... They remained a dead letter.

A general feeling is that as happened under the Jean

Claude Juncker Commission, for the next five years there will be more running on the spot.

On climate: are we exaggerating?

In political discussions about the need to counter the causes of climate change, I feel that we sometimes get caught between two contradictory tensions.

Firstly, comes the conviction that yes: unless we take full care and adopt the drastic measures that have become necessary, we will end up with an environmental disaster that on a global level, will weigh heavily on the future of mankind. Indicators that register how enormous ice chunks from the North and South poles are melting, or the incredibly violent out of season storms that sometimes prevail, seem to highlight this fear.

But then there is this second tension: could we be exaggerating? Over the centuries of known history, there have been times when drastic climate change also occurred. Then, the environment recovered ‘on its own’. Still today, given prevailing lifestyles, human society has cultivated and developed needs that are without precedent in the extent of the harsh burdens which they place on our environment.

Building regulations

Though the move came late, the government was right to issue regulations that attempt to protect citizens from the abusive inconveniences and worse that are rampantly being inflicted on residents when “old” buildings close to where they live are replaced by higher and more extensive structures. One can only hope that the new rules are strictly and correctly implemented, not ignored.

Many more decisions need to be taken to control the huge confusion one sees wherever works are proceeding on buildings old and new. Above all, with regards to the accidents, some fatal, that regularly happen on building sites. Because most times foreign workers are involved is no reason for the authorities to take things easy.

But also on such matters as: why is it that contractors, no matter who they are, start works, and then keep the site open for months, not to say years, as works are carried out bit by bit, while causing residents all too many inconveniences? Or why is it that road works start, get abandoned, then are given another shot according to the convenience of who is in charge? Such abuses and others are happening all over, from Birkirkara to Sliema, Qormi, Birżebbuġa and Gozo. It has gone well past what should be considered acceptable.

As if it's only in Malta!

The Commissioner who oversees parliamentary ethics has come out against the practice by which MPs are also employed by the government as persons of trust or in some other capacity. He has a point.

Still he could have placed his claims in a wider context: what is happening in the rest of Europe? It is one thing to suggest that when government MPs are employed with the state, their vote is getting tied. One could check whether it actually turns out that way.

For the same claim made by the Maltese Commissioner was also raised against Theresa May’s government in the UK which found jobs for scores of Conservative MPs. The same arguments deployed by the Commissioner came up.

Yet if there was a government which failed to get the total support of “its” own MPs, that was precisely May’s government.

Tsipras

As expected, Alexis Tsipras, Greek Prime Minister of the “extreme” left lost the general election. He too expected to lose. In fact, he called the election early after his party had lost European and municipal elections. It was as if he wanted to settle the matter of who should be running the country as soon as possible.

For leaders of Greece, events of the past years have been a huge weight crushing all under it. Which is what happened to Tsipras – he took off to contest the rules of the eurozone, won two elections and a referendum on that promise, but then had to relentlessly implement the rules he had pledged to defy. He managed to keep the Greek economy afloat and within the eurozone, while having to accept the same burdens about which he had criticised his predecessors. Unsurprisingly, those who had believed in him, ended up disillusioned.

At least he also succeeded to resolve the Macedonian problem and this in the national interest. One hopes that the achievement is not cancelled by the new government.

One cannot help but feel sorry for Tsipras.

“Over the centuries of known history, there have been times when drastic climate change also occurred. Then, the environment recovered ‘on its own’