SPEECH BY THE HON. JOE BORG, MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF MALTA, AT THE 15TH MALTA/EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT JOINT PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE - MALTA

Once again I have the pleasant opportunity of welcoming to Malta the EP members of the Malta/European Parliament Joint Parliamentary Committee. The regular rhythm of the twice yearly sessions of this committee continues to provide an excellent opportunity for taking stock of the state of Malta/EU relations and for anticipating future developments.

The six months since the Committee's last meeting in November 2000 have been rich in interesting and important developments. The accession negotiations have entered into their most complex and intensive stage. At the same time they have already progressed to the point where we can now start anticipating the shape and time frame of the concluding stages. The programme of Malta's pre-accession activities has gone into full swing. We have started our effective participation in the Union's educational and youth programmes, and have practically completed formal preparations for our participation in the science and research programmes. We have reached agreement in principle with the Commission on improved reciprocal market access for some of our fisheries products. Our political co-operation with the European Union has both widened and intensified. We have declared our support and contribution to the ESDP at the recent meeting of Defence Ministers. Together with other candidate countries we are increasingly involved in the discussions on the future of Europe.

Enlargement has been one of the top priorities of Sweden's EU presidency. By the end of this Presidency, next month, we expect to have opened for negotiations twenty eight out of the twenty nine substantive chapters. We also expect that negotiations on sixteen of these twenty eight chapters will have been provisionally closed.

These chapters include the twelve we had already closed by the end of last year - dealing with Company Law, Economic and Monetary Union, Statistics, Industrial Policy, SMEs, Science and Research, Education and Training, Telecommunications and Information Technologies,, Culture and Audio-visual policy, Consumer Policy and Health Protection, External Relations, and Common Foreign and Security Policy.

In addition, at the forthcoming Ministerial session of the Accession Conference in mid-June, we expect to be provisionally closing four new chapters - the one on Financial Control, as already agreed at the deputies session in March, and the ones on Free Movement of Goods, Free Movement of Services and Energy, on which the remaining formalities should be completed over the coming days. With the closure of the chapters on Free movement of Goods and on Energy Malta will have successfully completed its negotiations for the first two transition periods. In the negotiations on the Chapter dealing with the Free Movement of Goods, Malta's request for a four year transitional period for the renewal of marketing authorisations for pharmaceutical products will have been accepted by the European Union. On Energy our request for a four year transition period for the completion of our build up of the required oil stocks will also have been accepted.

Consultations have entered into a very detailed stage on a number of other chapters. The nature of the issues we are dealing with in this regard are often of a technically complex, and sometimes sensitive, nature. They therefore need careful consideration both from our side as well as from the side of the Union. This may appear to affect the visible progress being achieved. In reality however the extent and nature of the work which has been done over the last few months should be producing its visible results in the coming months under the Belgian Presidency.

I am thinking in particular of such chapters as those on Free movement of Persons, Transport, Social Policy and Employment, and Justice and Home Affairs, where a significant amount of technical work has already been completed.

The chapter on Free Movement of Persons has of course presented the European Union itself with a particular challenge in the formulation of a common position on the question of the free movement of workers. Malta's concerns in this regard echo in certain ways some of the concerns voiced within the Union. We are looking forward to an early conclusion of the discussions by EU members on this matter, as this will open the way for the closure of this chapter with a number of candidate countries, including Malta.

As we know, the Transport chapter raises particular sensitivities among EU members, and indeed also among members of the European Parliament. Over the last few months we have provided the necessary information and clarifications to the Commission including our Maritime Transport Action Plan. These confirm our contention that, on accession, Malta will be an effective, indeed vital, member of the Union in the area of maritime safety. The excellent and successful co-operation between the Maltese and EU delegations at the recent IMO meeting further underlines this point. Other issues relating to the transport chapter are primarily of a technical nature, including a few requests for transition periods in the area of road transport. We will soon present the arrangements we intend to make within the provisions of the acquis with regard to inter-island transport and the operations of Sea Malta. We expect that discussions on all these matters will soon bring this chapter to the point of provisional closure.

Similarly we expect an early completion of the work relating to the chapter on Social Policy and Employment, and the one on Justice and Home Affairs. On Social Policy most of the technical work of clarification and justification of the four transition periods we have requested is already competed, and the rest will be completed shortly. With regard to the Justice and Home Affairs chapter Malta considers that all relevant issues have already been satisfactorily clarified, and no transition period is being requested. This chapter can therefore be provisionally closed as soon as the members of the Union are ready to do so.

In the coming weeks and months we will also be continuing, and, hopefully, in many cases also concluding, detailed consultations on issues arising form other outstanding chapters, including Fisheries, Free Movement of Capital, Competition, Taxation and Customs Union. We also expect to start consultations on what will most probably be the chapters to be left until the final round of our negotiations next year - namely Agriculture, Environment, Regional Policy and Financial and Budgetary Provisions.

Following the introduction of new negotiating procedures based on the proposals contained in the Commission's strategy paper of last November, in January we held a first round of technical consultations with the Commission services on outstanding issues relating to the chapters already opened for negotiations. This round of consultations was intended to complement the more ad hoc consultations which are held as and when required on specific issues which arise in the course of the negotiations. We will be holding a second round of consultations in July. This will take place in conjunction with a session of the Association Committee of the Malta/EU Association Agreement, during which progress achieved in the implementation of our accession partnership will be examined.

It is in the nature of things that the formal sessions of the membership negotiations while perhaps being the smallest are nevertheless the most visible dimension of a massive process of patient, complex and laborious work which continuously goes on within the candidate countries, the Commission services, the Council Secretariat and the member states. There are two important considerations which we, in Malta, constantly keep in mind in undertaking our tasks in this regard.

On the one hand we remain deeply conscious of the intimate linkage which exists between our progress towards EU membership and progress in our national development effort. As I have regularly explained to this Committee we firmly hold the conviction that the process of national development and the process of joining the Union are mutually reinforcing and beneficial. The work we undertake in understanding and applying the acquis in the different sectors in itself constitutes an integral dimension of the work of adaptation and reform which are required in the restructuring and modernisation of our economy.

In concrete terms, if one looks at some of the key legislative and accompanying administrative initiatives we have launched over the last few months - the building up of our structures for standardisation and quality control, the innovations in our financial control procedures, the separation of the operational and regulatory tasks in the sector of telecommunications, the setting up of the Malta Communications Authority, of the Malta Resources Authority, of the eMalta Commission, and of the Occupational Health and Safety Authority, the new legislation and the new administrative structures in the areas of state aid, of policy planning and of data protection, the further reforms in our banking and services sectors including the establishment of a Financial Intelligence Unit, the enactment of an Electronic Commerce Act and of the Fisheries Conservation and Management Act, the legislative approximation and the strengthening of administrative capacity in the taxation sectors, the introduction by Customs of the Single Administrative Document and a number of other customs procedures in accordance with the Union's Customs Code - all these are as much a dimension of our necessary development effort as they are a dimension of our formal adoption of the Acquis. Mutually reinforcing benefits arise from the experience, support and encouragement accompanying our efforts when undertaken in conjunction with the parallel efforts of others who have gone through this task before us or are still engaged in the same endeavour.

A second consideration which we constantly keep in mind in the process of the accession negotiations is the need to keep the Maltese people informed of the nature and purpose of the work we are undertaking and, to the greatest extent possible, directly involved in it. As I have had occasion to explain to the Committee in the past, we have set up a number of structures, in particular the Malta EU Steering and Action Committee, and the Malta-EU Information Centre, with this specific objective in mind.

As you know, also from your experience within your Committee, the debate on EU membership continues to be a lively and far-ranging one in Malta. There are indeed some aspects of this debate which still focus on the broad and mainly ideological issues related to Malta's application for membership of the Union. At the same time however many aspects of this debate have moved on to the more concrete issues related to membership - both in terms of the economic, financial and social aspects of adopting specific areas of the acquis, as well as in terms of the details of the legislative and administrative reforms which are being put in place.

From the Government side we welcome and encourage this aspect of the internal debate. On the one hand it constitutes a direct and most useful contribution to the thinking process which goes into the formulation and conduct of our negotiating positions. On the other hand it creates the essential frame of mind within which the eventual referendum on the results achieved in the negotiations will be held. Our specific objective in this regard remains to bring to the Maltese a package of proposals relating to membership which, in their strong majority, they will find it possible to support and endorse. We remain fully confident that this objective will be achieved.

Our primary political objective remains for Malta to join at the first enlargement. The latest developments in the accession negotiations suggest that, while the negotiations have, as expected, now entered into their most complex and difficult stage, there remains a clear determination all around to respect the time frame envisaged at Helsinki and confirmed at Nice. Within such a context the expeditious resolution of the discussions among member states relating to the issues surrounding the question of free movement of workers, and other questions which will inevitably arise in the coming months, constitutes the clearest gauge of both the commitment as well as the capacity of the Union to bring the grand exercise of enlargement to a successful conclusion.

In this spirit the expectations remain that negotiations with the most advanced candidates should reach the final stages sometime next year. This will make it possible for all procedures to be in place to permit the new set of members to take part in the next elections to the European Parliament due in 2004. There is a general acknowledgement that Malta is on the right track to be among this first set of members. In the coming months we intend to maintain and, indeed, enhance progress in the accession negotiations to ensure that this remains the case.

From its side the European Parliament continues its active interest and involvement in the enlargement process. A number of reports are being drawn up in preparation for the discussion on enlargement which the EP Plenary will hold after the summer. From our point of view the most interesting report in this regard is the one being prepared by the rapporteur on Malta in the Foreign Affairs Committee, Ms Ursula Stenzel. We appreciate the energy and commitment which Ms Stenzel is bringing into her task. Over the past weeks we have given her all necessary assistance in the preparation of her work.

We are also interested in other reports being prepared on other aspects of the enlargement process, and in particular the ones being drawn up in the Constitutional Affairs Committee and the Budgets Committee. I would like to draw the attention of the EP members of the Malta/EP JPC to those parts of these reports which will touch upon matters of relevance to Malta. I am thinking in particular of the issue of the allocation of EP seats for new member states as proposed in Nice last December. I am also thinking of the issues which arise in connection with the financial and administrative implications of dealing with the additional translation and interpretation work consequent upon the expected additional membership of the Union.

I also understand that you have been provided with a first draft of a report on Malta which is being prepared by the Economic and Social Committee. We are looking forward to this report. We hope that the ESC will find our suggestions useful. In this context, I would also like to inform you that we are actively considering the setting up of a Joint Consultative Committee in the near future.

I have already mentioned various other interesting developments which have taken place in connection with Malta/EU relations. I would like to highlight two aspects in this regard - the successful conclusion of the discussions we have had with the Commission on reciprocal concessions in market access for some fisheries products, and the start of our participation in some of the Community's programmes. We welcome these developments and wish to build further upon them during the pre-accession period. In particular we are interested in discussing a wider programme of reciprocal concessions in the area of agriculture, and we look forward to a more extensive involvement in the Community's programmes, and especially the ones dealing with SME's and with Media and Culture.

The programme of pre-accession assistance has also moved successfully into its implementation phase. The financing agreements for the projects under the year 2000 allocation of 6 million Euro were signed in December, and the framework agreement giving the go-ahead for the implementation of these projects was signed in April. These projects cover technical assistance and administrative co-operation, Customs and Tax Adaptation, Institutional capacity in the field of agriculture, participation in EU programmes, and Malta's participation in TAIEX.

Work on the year 2001 allocation of 7.5 million Euro is also well advanced. The projects for 2001 cover follow up projects regarding participation in the Community's education programmes, Phase II of the Customs and Taxation project, and technical assistance and administrative co-operation, together with four new projects related to the adaptations necessary for implementing the Acquis in the areas of Justice and Home Affairs, the Free Movement of Goods, Social Policy, and Regional Policy.

The Memorandum of Understanding for the application of the Extended Decentralised Implementation System (EDIS) in the utilisation of pre-accession funds has also been signed in April. The structures that Malta has completed to introduce the extended decentralised system are part of the overall administrative structures we are putting into place for our eventual effective participation in the Union's Structural and Cohesion programmes. The latest statistical information from Eurostat confirms that Malta will be in a position to benefit from Objective 1 status upon accession.

The fact that we have not been given access to the major pre-accession instruments of ISPA and SAPARD remains a handicap for us, vis-a-vis other candidate countries, in both financial as well as administrative terms. We have continued our discussions on this matter with the Commission, in particular during Commissioner Verheugen's visit to Malta in February and again during my recent meeting with him in Brussels. We hope that some remedial action will be taken in the coming months. For this reason, while expressing our appreciation for the support which EP members have consistently extended to Malta in this regard we wish to urge you to maintain your efforts.

Over the last six months we have continued our active involvement in the Euro-Mediterrranean partnership. The political environment has unfortunately not been helpful in this context. We however continue to insist that the Barcelona process remains the essential framework for the long term development of Euro-Mediterranean co-operation. We intend to maintain our full commitment to this process while participating in other initiatives aimed at promoting Mediterranean co-operation, such as the Mediterranean Forum.

Over the last few months the Swedish presidency has lived up to its commitment to start engaging candidate countries in the emerging debate on the future of Europe. There are already clear indications that the Belgian presidency will continue to provide further opportunities for our involvement as the debate takes further shape in preparation for the Laeken Summit. We are prepared to play an active role in this regard in the expectation that, in the final decision making phase in 2004, Malta will be taking part in the discussions as a full participant.

I would like to conclude my remarks by thanking you for the opportunity you have again given me to share my thoughts on Malta/EU relations with you. I thank you for your attention and wish you well in your proceedings.