The anxious travails of Malta’s neutrality | John Baldacchino

Neutrality has to do with domestic as much as foreign policy. How we regard the rest of the world reflects and impacts on how we regard each other at home. Put simply, neutrality was never intended to build high walls around our borders.

Looking closer at why the government and Opposition agreed to enshrine neutrality in Malta’s Constitution back in 1987, one begins to understand how this was a very domestic issue. What we make of that agreement now is down to us, especially when most of those leaders are no longer with us and our leaders today seem to entertain less of a clear position than their predecessors.

38 years ago

Back in 1987, Malta’s political scene was on the brink of collapse. A constitutional crisis led to deadly violence. It is easy to reduce this to a disparity between seats and votes. The electoral result was the last straw in a post-colonial process where Maltese society was still trying to redress the imbalance of power inherited from centuries of foreign occupation.

In that bargain, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici included neutrality and non-alignment, to which Eddie Fenech Adami agreed. Neutrality must be contextualised within this history, and the mainstay of that agreement solidly articulated what happened inside and beyond Malta.

The principles of neutrality were laid out and made public by Mifsud Bonnici on several occasions, especially to his Labour Party faithful. Bear in mind that in the MLP there was considerable anger towards an agreement which would open the doors for a Nationalist government.

Be that as it may, neutrality became an integral part of Malta’s history. It was never meant to be immutable, but the principles of neutrality remain foundational and as we reach the 40th anniversary of that agreement in 2027, neutrality still retains its strong relevance to what Malta’s republic is all about.

What has changed?

It is interesting to note that by the late 1980s the Nationalists’ ambition to join the EU was already made clear. Even when Mifsud Bonnici consistently opposed EU membership, the agreement he drew confirmed how both sides regarded neutral status as a building block for the next iteration of Malta’s political history. During the Nationalist administrations that followed, prominent figures like Guido de Marco who played a major role in foreign policy, were not only supportive of neutrality but used it to sustain the Nationalists’ ambitions for Malta’s role in the EU.

Fast forward to 2025, history took its course and reframed the original context of neutrality. The Cold War is over, the USSR is gone, and new alliances are emerging. More significantly, Malta joined the EU in 2004. While this left the notion of non-alignment in a degree of ambiguity, neutrality was never put in question. Nevertheless, with the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and now with new twists in US foreign policy, we must assess how the case for Malta’s neutrality needs to be asserted once more.

Old fears

Being in two or even three minds on neutrality does not mean that one cannot remain wedded to the notion of Malta as a neutral country in the EU. However, while this makes sense, those discussing neutrality on Malta’s behalf must move away from the usual myths that have always formed our post-colonial imaginary.

Often, vague discussions on Malta’s status reflect a siege mentality constructed and retold through the stories of the Maltese who enclosed themselves behind the walls of their cities to fight off the enemy. These all too quick analogies prompt the same old questions. Do we always need to be walled in? Should we form part of an alliance that takes over our autonomy so we can be safe? Those who make the case for being walled in say that actually it’s because of foreign alliances that we were attacked. The other side of the argument states that if it weren’t for those alliances, Malta would have fallen.

The same arguments were made when discussing Independence, the end of British military bases, and joining the EU. Neutrality is no exception. But to discuss this from such a position of anxiety makes no real sense. Between walling ourselves and making Malta available to the best power on offer leaves us nowhere in particular, especially when Malta already forms part of the European Union.

Clear as mud

Leaving aside the infantile shenanigans played in the Maltese and European Parliaments, Joseph Muscat’s and Robert Abela’s foreign policy was never that different from Lawrence Gonzi’s. During the Libyan civil war, Labour fully supported the Gonzi government. A couple of weeks ago, Bernard Grech agreed with Abela on more spending on security and defence. There is no discerning difference – in fact, both the PN and PL are as clear as mud when it comes to neutrality.

Yes, there is a palpable anxiety, especially at a time when Washington, Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and others are no longer shy of sporting their expansionist views of the world.

But this must and should not put Malta in a weak position. Rather, more than ever before, and perhaps because of the history that made Malta what it is now, Maltese democracy should become far clearer in its strategic understanding of its Mediterranean and European realities.

In my humble opinion, to do so we need all the tools we can get, and those would include both Malta’s EU membership and its neutrality. How we use such tools is now up to us.

John Baldacchino’s latest book Secular Reflections: On a Nation’s Anomaly (Midsea), is now available in all good bookshops.