Surprise! Malta IS the EU... and has been for 10 years

Next year, Malta will celebrate its 10th anniversary as an EU member state. Yet all this week - a week dominated by fresh arrivals of asylum seekers, and all the usual anti-immigration hysteria that invariably accompanies such events - the mantra arising from the exasperated multitudes was

The EU must help us!

The EU must share the burden!

The EU must put its money where its mouth is!

The EU must solve our problems!

The EU must give us money!

Lots and lots and lots of money!

And so on, and so forth, and so fifth.

Excuse me, folks, but... that thing you all talk about as if it were a distant, otherworldly institution, hovering somewhere in the clouds above grey and drizzly Brussels? It includes us too, you know.

Yes indeed. We are part of the EU ourselves and have been since 2004. That is in fact the whole point of what we will be 'celebrating' (with how much gusto remains to be seen) next April: the 10th anniversary of Malta's acceptance as a supposedly equal partner in a bloc of 27 states (now 28) called "the European Union".

In theory, this means that Malta is as much a member of the EU as France, Germany, Italy and all the rest of the countries that we now seem to think exist only to relieve us of our burdens - without us having to relieve them of any of theirs, naturally. Isn't that what 'equality' means?

And yes, I know it doesn't quite work that way in practice. I'll be damned if I can think of a single issue on which Malta actually got its way in the face of opposition by other, larger and more influential EU member states... though reverse the order in that sentence, and I can suddenly think of quite a few.

But on paper, we all know that that is how it's supposed to work. Or at least, that's what we were all told by Gunther Verheugen (in another galaxy, long, long ago)

Yet here we all are, 10 years later, tearing our hair out at the sudden arrival of 300 people on our island (because that's all they are, by the way. People. Ooh, scary) and turning to this fantasy world we call 'the EU' for help: as if the entire purpose of its existence was to step in and solve all our problems the moment we find ourselves out of our national depth.

The EU should take them!

The EU should control our borders!

The EU should... give us money!

Yes, damn it. Money! Isn't that why we joined? To get lots and lots and lots of MONEY...?

And underpinning all those quite frankly embarrassing examples of international mendicancy is the same old tired misconception.

Ten years after joining, we are still talking about the EU in the same way we used to talk about it before our accession. There is still an automatic arm's length between us and the bloc of European nations we are supposed to be a member of, "sitting round the table (if you remember the old political rhetoric of yesteryear) as equal partners" and all that crap.

To put it bluntly, it sounds like if we never actually joined at all.

Meanwhile, much as I hate to be the party pooper, there is a very simple answer for all those arguing that the EU should simply 'take' our entire migrant population for us... or somehow step in to resolve a minor internal issue that we simply can't solve for ourselves. (Oh, that reminds me: we have also just gone and advertised to the world that Malta doesn't have the resources to handle the sudden arrival of 300 people - in other words, around one-third the amount that can be comfortably seated in the new theatre in Valletta. I mean, doesn't that make you so proud to be Maltese?)

In any case, my answer to the above howls of 'the EU should take them' is... too late, folks. It's already happened. The EU has already taken those migrants in; and is now handling their applications for asylum.

So why are they are all still here? the more retarded among you may well be asking. Because - in case it wasn't already bleedingly obvious enough already - 'here' IS the EU, that's why. We joined in 2004, remember?

In fact it never ceases to amaze me how nobody seems capable of seeing the contradiction here. The equivalent would be a government minister banging his fist on the desk and demanding to know why the same government he is part of himself isn't doing enough about this, that and the other.

We all know what answer we'd give that government minister under those circumstances. So why should the EU's answer to our own identical demand be any different today?

Sadly, however, it seems that an already absurd situation has just become a little... well... 'absurder'.

The problem is this. I'd more or less understand if it were only ordinary citizens like you and me who either forgot or never quite realised that we ourselves form part of the same EU that we always turn to for help, with our begging bowls in hand, the moment life in Malta isn't exactly as 100% hunky-dory as we'd like it to be.

And I don't really blame them for behaving this way, either. After all, it's hardly surprising that the European Union would remain to this day such a very nebulous reality to the man in the street. For one thing, membership has not translated into the prosperity we were all promised before 2004. On the contrary, all we ever hear from the EU these days is doom, gloom and threats of excessive deficit procedures. Oh, and maybe the occasional rap on the knuckles for not being 'austere' enough... you know, for spending too much on public health. ("You're trying to cure your sick and your infirm? What a scandalous, shameful waste of money!") Or for not paying the full price for catastrophic economic mistakes made by other countries, but (for a change) not our own.

Barring the occasional EU-funded project here and there (which must naturally be balanced by Malta's annual tax contributions to Brussels) the actual benefits of membership have to date - let's face it - been rather thin on the ground. Small wonder, then, that so many people seem to think we never actually joined in the first place.

But it is no longer just the ordinary man in the street who seems to be under this impression. It is now also the entire government of Malta... as exemplified by the Prime Minister's astonishing statements this week, in which all the usual painfully flawed assertions came trotting out thick and fast:

"We are experiencing a crisis!" - which incidentally makes you wonder how Joseph Muscat would define Lampedusa's immigration problem... you know, that small matter of 50,000 asylum seekers landing on an island half the size of Gozo (actual population 6,000) since 2011 - and of course, the standard old chestnut we have to come to expect from people who are totally ignorant of European affairs:

"The EU should take them in!"

Yes, he really said that - I'm not making any of this up, you know - and this is how it was reported: "In responding to a comment by European Commissioner Cecilia Malmström that Malta's migrant arrivals had not reached an alarming rate, Muscat was quick to respond to the press that the Commissioner should offer to have her home country, Sweden, accept Malta's arrivals..."

You tell them, Joseph! Sock it to those smorgasbord-swilling Swedish swine and make us all proud! But while you're busy flexing your muscles for the benefit of a few easily impressionable hardliners back home... isn't there a little something you're forgetting here?

Money, damn it! You forgot to beg for money. So back you go like a good little European prime minister, and this time give Malmström a small message from the rest of the country, too.

"As an EU member state, Malta expects all other EU members states to a) solve all our problems, b) relieve us of all our burdens, c) not make any demands of us in return, and d) GIVE US MONEY!"

Lots and lots and lots of money. After all, I'll be damned if I can see any other reason for joining....