Address by Fenech - Adami, Prime Minister of Malta
28 janvier 2003

Mr President,
I am very pleased to have been given this opportunity to address the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, particularly in view of Malta's current role as Chair of the Committee of Ministers. I believe that every healthy organisation benefits from a periodic reassessment of the function and path that it has forged for itself. Today's session provides the Council with the ideal opportunity to undergo this sort of self-appraisal and to ask: "what are we here for and how can we do it better?"

In Malta, we too are facing some similar soul-searching as we find ourselves at a historic crossroads. After my Government's successful conclusion of accession negotiations with the EU at the Copenhagen Summit last December, the Maltese people will shortly set the seal, through a referendum, upon whether or not the future of their country lies within the Union.

Our quest for membership of the Union was inspired by deep-rooted historical and economic factors. Membership in the Union is for Malta a natural continuation, and not a radical shift, from its past. Indeed, it will enhance our commitment to those ideals, such as human rights, democracy and rule of law, that we have consistently sought to strengthen and uphold, and that have long inspired our participation in this Council.

In this context, therefore, with the imminent prospect of Malta's EU membership in mind, I wish today to focus on a vital aspect of the Council of Europe's role as a dynamic forum for promoting understanding and collaboration between its EU members and its non-EU members. This immediately provides a very clear reason why accession to the Union does not necessarily imply any lesser commitment to the Council of Europe. The situation is the opposite - Malta's accession to the Union does not carry any abdication from the tasks willingly entered into many years previously by way of membership of the Council, but rather strengthens our commitment in this regard.

We intend to continue our contribution to the political construction of what has now come to be known as "Greater Europe" - the Europe of forty-four states - as distinct from the Europe of the fifteen Member States who may well increase to twenty-five next year..
Nor can we forget the fact that there are fields, such as Human Rights and socio-cultural development, in which the action of the Union is in no way taken to substitute that of the Council, even with respect to the relatively smaller circle of its members.

I wish to address a few brief remarks related mainly to the issues arising out of our Council being the natural locus of co-operation between Europeans. The European vision towards which both the Union and the Council are oriented is neither that of an exclusive fortress, nor is it fuelled by any hegemonic ambition. On the contrary, it is rather that of establishing stepping-stones in an ordered sequence directed towards the setting up of a peaceful and progressive system of world governance.

Both the European Union and the Council ultimately exist to promote a form of globalisation that is free from any threat to the different and evolving identity of any nation. It is, therefore, one of our most immediate tasks to ensure that the political dialogue between the Council members who are also members of the Union, and those who are not, takes place, in our effort to make a coherent joint contribution to the genesis of universal human solidarity. The Council of Europe is the ideal, if not the unique, context within which such a strategy needs to be worked out.

In the proposed Constitution for the European Union currently being discussed by the Convention, there are references to the need to boost co-operation between the Union and other countries that, for some reason or another, are unable to join. Such initiatives could yield some useful additional strength to an enlarged European network, particularly in terms of managing issues that cut across national borders.

The drafters of the Union's proposed Constitution seem to have in mind particularly such otherwise insoluble questions as the rational management of the resources of the Mediterranean Sea. Obviously, such matters can only be handled holistically within a wider framework than that of the Union. Perhaps they should also loom larger in our Council's agenda, in the perspective of co-operative action between all our members and our neighbours.

Mr President,

Allow me now to turn very quickly to the socio-cultural dimension that has been the Council's privileged area of activity ever since its birth. It has been observed that, in the recommendations of the Working Group on the External Relations of the Union, submitted at the Convention, there was no reference to culture at all.

Such a neglect is paradoxical in the present world context. Probably all of us here rightly reject the thesis of an inevitable clash of civilizations, but we would probably agree that the promotion of cross-cultural dialogue is one of the most urgent needs in international relations. It is not only central to warding off war and terrorism, but also to the development of the poly-faceted knowledge society that has become the ideal of our leading economists. Even in the purely materialistic terms of pursuing our worldly interests, cultural exchanges have soared to the top of our priority list, particularly since in today's economic reality knowledge is widely recognized as a fundamental resource for sustaining growth.

From its very inception, culture has been to the Council of Europe what free trade has hitherto been to the European Union.

There certainly remains ample room for more collaboration between the Council and the Union in the promotion of multi-cultural and inter-religious dialogue that are basic to the flourishing of all other types of exchanges in the area. The Council can claim a relevant degree of expertise that has been built up over the years, despite perennially meager funding.

The same applies to the social dimension. At the Convention, a debate is presently underway as to how what many call the "European Social Model" is best reflected in the proposed Constitution. It is clear that consensus is up to now only guaranteed with regard to benchmarking, knowledge of best practices, scenario building and similar policies.

It would appear that the Council of Europe, with its years of experience with the European Social Charter, as well as its much broader geographical scope and earlier policy of inclusion, could have much to offer in the way of collaboration. The challenges ahead are certainly not lacking, from dramatic migratory inflows to rapidly aging populations, providing ample openings for dialogue between the EU and non-EU members of the Council.

Thirdly, and finally, the Council and the Union have already been engaged in some constructive albeit sporadic exchanges in the field of Human Rights. It is not at all generally realized, on the one hand, that the incorporation of the Nice Declaration of Fundamental Rights into the proposed Constitution of the Union will only lead to enforcement by the Union Courts in case of abuses by the European Institutions themselves, or by States acting on their behalf. Ways are being studied, on the other hand, of how the Union could subscribe as if it were a State to the Convention applied by our hard-working Court in Strasbourg.

However, perhaps the biggest challenge brought up by the Nice Declaration is the wide expansion of social and economic rights that it contains, often unfortunately formulated in a language that seems to defy enforcibility. The whole situation surely demands from all of us in the Union and the Council a concerted effort to ensure that Greater Europe has as coherent a Human Rights system as possible.

Mr President,

I have, until now, concentrated mainly on the potential of the Council as a forum for communication between its EU and non-EU members, partly because the topic has been highlighted for discussion during Malta's Presidency of the Committee of Ministers. As I said earlier on, it also inevitably features in the vision of a small country accepted for membership of the Union precisely when it is chairing the Committee of Ministers, as it happens for the third time in its history, and for the second with me as Prime Minister.

At such a juncture, one cannot help thinking that, precisely because of their dimensions, small countries can often contribute more effectively to the resolution of issues of a certain nature. This class of issues requires not so much give-and-take in counter-trading mode, as the lateral pursuit of win-win solutions. Third ways can sometimes be carved out not so much in between opposed positions, but transcending them.

It seems to me that, on the chosen issue of renewing the Union-Council relationship in the light of the changes in both, we have only just reached the stage of formulating the questions rather than that of giving the answers.

Mr President,

Malta has belonged to the Council of Europe long enough to have an insider's understanding of its workings, but is still poised on the threshold of the Union. The process of being initiated into a complex organization inevitably takes time. For instance, ever since 1987, when I first became Prime Minister, Malta has been engaged in the process of really becoming part of the organization of the Council.

We began incorporating the European Convention of Human Rights fully into the Laws of Malta. Over the same period, Malta embarked on another long process to introduce and develop the concept of local government, resulting in the signing the European Charter of Local Self-Government on the 13th July 1993. Malta has also adapted its Criminal Code to introduce the concepts and devices needed to cope with such new phenomena as money-laundering and, under the guidance of Council of Europe Committees, sought to extend the application of the novel legal prescriptions to the financing of terrorism.

We are now learning to differentiate between the tools needed when it is the origin of the funds that is criminal, and when it is rather their destination.

Mr President,

Of course, we still have no such experiences garnered in the context of the Union. But it is perhaps not too early for us to begin forming at least a schematic picture of the Union's relation to the Council. Essentially, it appears that the Union is a cluster of nodes with particularly intense exchanges of information in certain respects, within the generally much looser but more extensive network that is the Council. Even such a crude model can provide a useful framework in which we can at least begin our search for answers to the questions you have given me the opportunity to pose to you today.