The darkest years of the crisis

Malta and the Euro 2

Author: Alfred Sant Publisher: SKS Publications / 2015 Extent: 529pp

The first volume had chronicled Alfred Sant’s writings, articles, speeches, etc. about the European crisis up till 2011. This volume contains Dr Sant’s articles etc. from 2011 to 2015.

Those were the darkest years of the crisis when most of the time we did not know whether the euro would survive, whether Greece would still remain in the euro, and whether the European dream was doomed.

For opinion writers such as Dr Sant it is very difficult not to read what one has written years down the line and not find something that has dated or aged, that was not right, that could have been said better. Nevertheless, Dr Sant offers us his writings in full transparency.

It is also clear from his words that at that time he was rather sceptical about Greece’s survival and about the future of the euro. Today we know the euro has come out of these terrible years with undiminished strength and that Greece has survived, although at a terrible price.

The book covers both the period when Dr Sant was still a Labour MP in Malta and also the time when Dr Sant began serving as an MEP in Brussels. There does not seem to be any change in his opinion from when he was a local MP to when he became an MEP.

We only have his writings and some of his speeches. This does not tell us how he felt in the dying days of the Gonzi legislature and what his feelings were when he moved to Brussels and Strasbourg. Certainly, the next book after this will have the many speeches that Dr Sant has taken to make on an almost daily basis.

There are in this book 49 articles or speeches. Many of the articles are in Maltese and were written for It-Torca while his Englishlanguage articles appeared on The Malta Independent on Sunday and on The Times.

There are some useful articles included, especially the timeline from 1999 and the birth of the euro to February 2015. Syriza had begun its term in Greece but the July 2015 crunch-time was yet to come and the night-long European Council during which Syriza capitulated.

The timeline and assorted articles are also useful for the information they give about the amount to which Malta is exposed because of the Greek crisis. This exposure rose from a €30 million loan in May 2010 to €511.7 million to set up the European Financial Stability Fund in March 2011 plus a further €200 million loan to IMF (December 2011).

Of importance in this volume are some speeches that Dr Sant made in the Maltese Parliament in which he protested (the only one to do so) that Parliament was being fed incomplete information by the PN government about the austerity wave that was about to hit Malta pushed through by Germany and the Commission hitting harder the small fry rather than the big countries themselves.

Included in this was his insistence on Malta following the accruals system which he had begun to implement when he was in power but which was neglected by the PN administration and his suggestions on better functioning of the Auditor General and NSO.

In another speech he regretted the lack of proper scrutiny by the Maltese parliament of legislation being enacted in Brussels. MPs were being faced with a fait accompli.

The book also spans between the last years under the PN and the first months under Labour. In the former time-frame the Malta budget was sent back by the Commission which found the Maltese predictions to be too optimistic and it ordered the budget to be cut by €40 million, which the Gonzi government carried out across the board.

It is always clear what Dr Sant’s preferences were – he was always on the Eurosceptic side, against federalism or any deepening of the European structures, obviously against making the FTT applicable to Malta. And a clear appreciation of Francois Hollande (and look where that finished!)