Spanish Premier Supports Malta's EU Accession

by Ulrika Lomas, Tax-News.com, Brussels

28 February 2002

On a brief visit to Malta yesterday, Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar said he was hoping and trusting that Malta would join the EU, of which Spain currently holds the Presidency.

At a press conference after holding talks with Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami, Mr Aznar said that Malta was making significant improvement in the accession talks with the EU. He expressed his confidence that Malta could be one of the first candidate countries to be included in the coming enlargement. However, he made it clear that whether to join or not was a decision to be taken by the Maltese people and said he hoped that the final decision on enlargement would be taken by the EU by the end of this year.

Dr Fenech Adami said Malta's negotiations with the EU had reached a very advanced stage. He said it was the government's intention to close all the remaining chapters, except the three dealing with financial and budgetary provisions, by the end of the Spanish presidency in June. It was expected, Dr Fenech Adami said, that in the coming weeks Malta would be closing the chapters dealing with justice and home affairs and that dealing with fisheries. He said substantial improvement had been made on the chapter dealing with taxation.

The Prime Minister said that Mr Aznar had assured him there would be full cooperation by the Spanish presidency for Malta to be able to attain its goal to close all the remaining chapters - bar the three chapters dealing with financial and budgetary provisions - by the end of June. He said the Maltese economy had suffered tremendously when the Labour government suspended Malta's EU application bid in 1996. The "economy did not perform well," he added.

Speaking separately yesterday at a conference on the state of negotiations, Richard Cachia Caruana, Chairman of the Core Negotiating Group agreed that the the Maltese people would be in a position to decide whether to join the European Union in a year from now, but said that the toughest negotiations were still around the corner.

Cachia Caruana outlined the progress achieved by Malta in all areas and gave details of the ongoing negotiations in sensitive chapters that remain open such as those on Fisheries, Financial and Budgetary Provisions, Regional Policy and Agriculture.

Cachia Caruana however looked confident that all negotiations will be concluded before the end of this year. "From the outset Malta had set itself the target of concluding negotiations by the end of this year. There is now a clear commitment on the part of the EU to make every effort to attain this goal. The coming months are therefore crucial," he said.

"It means, however, that a year from now we should be in a position to evaluate the complete package that the Maltese people will decide upon."

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