How Euroscepticism was marginalised – Malta’s post-membership Euro-enthusiasm and the impact of BREXIT

ABSTRACT

Before joining the EU in 2004 Malta registered the starkest level of Euroscepticism amongst applicant states with a major party opposed to EU membership and a marked antipathy amongst half the population. A decade later, party-based Euroscepticism has been replaced by cross-party Euroenthusiasm in this two-party state. However, underlying Euroscepticism remains amongst the population and anti-EU, anti-immigrant parties have emerged since membership. With close political and cultural ties with the UK, this article argues that BREXIT has the potential to undermine that Euroenthusiasm as the two parties compete for those voters dissatisfied with the EU.

KEYWORDS:

• Euroscepticism
• Euro-enthusiasm
• Malta
• BREXIT

Notes

1 Recently a third party emerged within Parliament when a sitting MP, Marlene Farrugia, resigned from the Labour Party in 2015 and established a new party, the Democratic Party, in 2016.

2 In its 1993 opinion on Malta's application, the European Commission had expressed concern regarding Malta's neutrality and its compatibility with the Union's newly launched foreign policy pillar, the CFSP. To assuage the Commission's concerns, Malta had joined NATO's Partnership for Peace (PfP) in 1995. Subsequently, the Labour party had withdrawn in 1996 and Malta returned to PfP in 2008, the argument being that it facilitated cooperation within the Union's Foreign Affairs Council. Therefore, NATO's PfP has always had an EU dimension in Maltese political discourse.

3 The Maltese Greens (Alternativa Demokratika) had been consistently pro-EU membership and hoped to secure a sizeable vote in the 2003 general election after helping to secure a victory for the ‘yes’ camp in the 2003 EU membership referendum. However, the party performed badly after the Nationalist party campaigned on the ticket that a vote for the Greens could lead to Labour winning the general election. The result was that the Greens performed remarkably well in the 2004 EP elections as people, dissatisfied with the Nationalists, cast their vote for AD. AD won nearly 23,000 votes, over 9 per cent of the votes cast.