Europe is not for sale. Unless you make a really, really good offer…

Well, this week brought with it a bundle of news, and no mistake. Take Wednesday's debate in the European Parliament about 'European citizenship for sale', for instance. I for one learnt more about the institutions that make up the EU in that half-hour alone, than the Malta-EU Information Centre managed to teach me - at the cost of Lm3 million, borne by the tax payer - in the entire decade before we actually joined.

I for one had absolutely no idea - and certainly hadn't been given any reason to suppose, either - that the European Union we joined in 2004 was such an immaculately squeaky-clean place... an incorruptible bastion of impeccable morals and vertiginous ethical standards, beset from all angles by an ocean of smut, crime and corruption.

As I listened to one MEP after another talking in horrified tones about 'the rest of the world' - mostly Russia, America and China - as it were populated only by drug barons, corrupt oligarchs and unscrupulous, exploitative capitalists... I suddenly realised how very fortunate we all are to live in the only economic bloc on the planet where all such things are simply alien and non-existent.

It transpires, for instance, that before naughty little Malta starting flogging its passports on the global market, not a single European country had ever accepted large (or even small) amounts of cash in the form of 'investments' from Russian, American or Chinese crooks. No, not even one euro's worth. Forget everything you've ever read or heard about Russian oligarchs buying up huge swathes of real estate (as well as the occasional football team) in the heart of European capitals such as London; or about vast bank deposits of Russian and Chinese money held in Commissioner Viviane Reding's home country of Luxembourg; or about European countries falling over themselves in the mad scramble for lucrative deals with some of the same American, Chinese and Russian (and Libyan, and Saudi Arabian, and Kyrgystani, etc) tycoons and arch-criminals whose very mention now makes Europe's elected representatives shudder with revulsion and distaste...

Oh, and never mind also the naked, undisguised trade in weapons and armaments destined for all the world's troubled hot-spots, in exchange for... oh, bouquets of flowers and polite 'thank-you' notes, I suppose. None of that ever mattered at all, you see... until Malta decided to sell the grand total of 1,800 passports for 650K a pop. Then, suddenly, the collective voices of all Europe's elected representatives - with around four exceptions - joined in unison to howl and wail in terror at the prospect of their precious Europe being swamped by vast cash investments that drip with the blood of innocents, and reek to high heavens of rot, crime and corruption.

Honestly, it was hard not to jump to my feet in applause at such a moving display of European hypo... I mean, democracy in action. Bravo!

Another thing we learnt is that Europe is also built on the solid foundations of drama and romantic patriotic fervour: a sentiment so passionate and heart-felt that it can only really be expressed in the language of song.

So when Irish MEP Sean Kelly was called upon to urinate on a fellow member state for the grave crime of trying to attract a little investment, he almost burst into an old Irish ditty about "The American" - spoken of as if "The Americans" are some newly-discovered species of invasive parasite - who wanted to buy an Irish town.

I mean, can you believe it? An American (ugh!) wanting to buy up property in a European member state! What on earth will it be next? European universities accepting Chinese (ugh!) students? Or Russian (ugh!) oil magnates transferring their assets to European banks? Small wonder Kelly would pour his indignation out in such melodious patriotic verve...

Strangely, however, Sean Kelly had no songs to sing throughout the long decades when his own country, Ireland, peddled its own passports for a fistful of Irish punts. This is from a 2012 article in International Living: 'For about 10 years until the mid-1990s, Ireland offered an economic citizenship program that was highly popular, at least among very wealthy people. For a five-year, unsecured investment of $1.7 million, instant citizenship was granted within 90 days.'

Similar schemes were relaunched recently to counter the effects of economic crisis: 'This new program began on April 15, 2012, and if you make the investment, it can lead to full citizenship. Irish citizenship opens the door to full personal and commercial access to all 27 countries in the European Union.'

How odd. I would have the thought the sound of music would echo across the green hills of Ireland, from County Cork all the way to Tipperary (and that's a long way, let me tell you) at this grave affront to common decency and 'European values'... with Sean Kelly himself leading an orchestra of infuriated little leprechauns, all chanting at the top of their voices: "No, No, No, our wee country is not for sale!"

But no, no, no music was heard on that occasion, was it? Dead silence, except for the wind rustling in meadows of quivering shamrock. Where was Sean Kelly's shock and horror at the thought of selling his birth-right to a bunch of American capitalist pigs, I wonder?

But the lessons we learnt were by no means limited to the European Parliament alone. We also suddenly discovered that there are actually two European Commissions, not one. Either that, or its Vice President Viviane Reding has an undeclared identical twin who sometimes speaks in her place.

This is what Viviane Reding said when asked directly about Malta's proposed passports-for-sale scheme in November 2013: "This is a national matter. The Commission has no competence in this area and thus there is nothing for us to say."

But by Wednesday 14 January, the same Commission (or wait, was it the other one?) suddenly found it had plenty to say on the same subject.

"I am somewhat shocked that citizenship is being linked to the wallet," Reding told the European Parliament. "I am not aware that I have been consulted on this...this goes against EU treaties and even against international law." She even suggested that there may be "consequences" if Malta goes ahead with its scheme as planned.

So, pardon me for asking, but... which one of you is the real Viviane Reding, and which the identical twin? Or did something happen between November 2013 and January 2014 to force a rethink on the Commission's part regarding the sale of passports... something like (to give a wild, hypothetical example): a European parliamentary motion censuring Malta, drafted and pushed by the same European People's Party that Viviane Reding herself (or her twin) once led as President?

This of course brings me to the most glaring lesson we learnt from last Wednesday's debate: the astonishing flexibility of European principles. We all saw how the 'monetisation of citizenship' - which has been taking place in Ireland, Austria, Cyprus and elsewhere for years (if not decades, in Ireland's case) - has suddenly become 'incompatible with European values'. And as this same phenomenon existed before but was plainly never considered a problem, we can only conclude that what actually changed in the meantime was not the nature of the lucrative business of putting European citizenship up for sale; but rather, the 'principle' this trade is supposed to violate.

You and I may have been brought up to believe that principles and values are somehow immutable. Not Europe's values, though. These, it would seem, are things that can change from time to time... depending on the precise circumstances of the day, and perhaps the interests of the disparate countries that make up Europe in the first place.

So for years and years it may be perfectly acceptable for member states to devise schemes which openly attract investment by 'high-wealth individuals' (who later become 'corrupt oligarchs, mafia bosses and third world drug lords', depending of the exigencies of the morally unimpeachable European parliament)... but when one member state takes the same concept but a small step further, and monetises its own citizenship with only marginal differences to the way it has been done for so long... hey presto! Out pops a spanking new European value that none of us ever knew existed... and of course we're in breach of it. Tut, tut, shame on you, etc.

And yet, I would have thought that one of the cardinal European values - unless it has likewise changed in the meantime, you never know - was 'equality'. If one principle applies to a little member state like Malta (or a large but recent one like Hungary) then it automatically applies to all the Union's member states, without exception.

That goes also for the European treaties that are supposedly built on these same principles: like the treaties and laws now cited by Commissioner Viviane Reding as the basis for possible future action against Malta. Nationalist leader Simon Busuttil tells us that such action may include infringement procedures in the European Court of Justice; and as Busuttil himself once headed the same MiC that taught us all we know about Europe anyway, I for one will take his word for it.

But despite having learnt, oh! so much about the EU in the last few days, there are things which I still can't understand. For instance: given that the principle we are supposed to be violating concerns the 'monetisation of European citizenship' - and that monetisation takes many forms, including programmes which offer passports, or channels that lead to passports, in exchange for investment - the European law now invoked against Malta by the Commission should surely also be invoked for all other countries which likewise sell their citizenship.

Small problem: Malta's citizenship scheme hasn't actually started as yet; and until a single Maltese passport is sold on the market, there can be no infringement procedures because no directives have actually been infringed. But the same clearly cannot be said for the ongoing investor programmes in other countries such as Austria and Ireland. Passports have already been exchanged for cash investments in both those countries, and others besides. It has been happening for years.

So rather than talking about possible future court action against Malta by the Commission... why aren't we talking about action taken by the Commission today - right now - to halt existing programmes in other countries, which also clearly violate the principle of 'linking citizenship to the wallet'?

More to the point: now that the vast majority of the European parliament - 89% - has urged the Commission to take precisely such action to prevent this repulsive 'sale of passports' business: why has Commissioner Reding not already called upon all EU member states which have such investor programmes in place, to instantly withdraw those programmes on pain of infringement procedures in the European Court?

If Commissioner Viviane Reding is too busy working on that bill of indictment against Malta - no doubt ably assisted by information provided by two of Malta's own MEPs - perhaps her identical twin could answer instead.