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CAMPAIGN FOR NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE

Was, is and shall remain in favour of Maltese workers

and against Malta's membership of the European Union

WE SWEAR TO FREE MALTA FROM THE SLAVERY, COLONIALISM AND DICTATORIAL ILLEGAL EUROPEAN UNION RULE

TELL YOUR PARLIAMENTARY DEPUTY THAT YOU WANT MALTA TO REGAIN INDEPENDENCE AND FREEDOM

The part of the European Union in the history of the Shipyard is worthy of being known so that the Maltese people can judge whether membership in the Union was beneficial or was damaging to the shipyards that for many centuries were considered as the national industry of our country.

In a local English newspaper of the 12 of the month it was clearly stated that a few months ago the European Union suggested to the Maltese Government to discharge all the Shipyard workers and dissolves the Malta Shipyards company that the Government had set up in 2003 to manage the Bormla, Marsa and Manoel Islands shipyards.

This suggestion shows that the European Union does not care about the employment of 1,700 workers and does not appreciate how the shipyards industry is important and required for Malta.

In another English local newspaper of the 14 of this month it was sated that the European Commissioner Neelie Kroes warned the Maltese Government that in the privatization of the Shipyard not to choose investors that are bound to keep the greatest number of the Shipyard workers because their offer would be lower because of this.

This warning shows that for the European Union the employment of the greatest number of workers is not the main useful purpose, and that for it the amount of the price offered is greater than the number of workers kept in employment.

The interference of the European Union in the Mata shipyards started before our country signed the Union membership Treaty on 16 April 2003.

For our country to be able to become a member in the Union, it bound it to implement a restructuring of the shipyards for a period of seven years from 2002 up to the end of this year.

With the restructuring plan the European Union imposed

* a reduction in the number of workers in the shipyards,

* limited the amount of work the shipyards could do,

* both of repairs and the building of ship,

* the closure of one of the docks,

* as well as fixed the amount of financial aid that the Government could give the shipyards.

This restructuring plan showed us that the European Union had more interest to subdue the competition that the Maltese shipyards could make to those of the other Union countries than the Maltese shipyards make as much work as possible of ship repair and ship building and employ the greatest number of workers that they can.

The European Union excuse was that the viability of the shipyards could only be achieved with those restructuring plan conditions. Today everyone admits that that was a bad plan and the Union that planned it was mistaken.

The engineer Lawrence Ciantar who was trained in the shipyard and for many years managed the Power Station, in a local newspaper thus wrote, on the 19 January this year.

“The so-called restructuring plan was nothing else as an exercise in the reduction of the number of workers to reduce the current expenditure.

No new investments were made in modern tools and machinery to increase the efficiency and quality of the work. No employee training was carried out in new technologies, particularly in management. The lack of apprentice entries so much needed for the Shipyard to continue to develop weakened severely the Shipyard potential for the coming years.”

“On the contrary, the Shipyard management was effectively passed on to a foreign management.”

Contrary to this, Engineer Lawrence Ciantar insisted that

“the management of the Shipyard should include a strong element of qualified Maltese managers and leave space for the services of foreign experts where they are required”.

And without hesitation insisted that

“it would be a great shame if what was built by our forefathers over hundreds of years would be our generation that destroys it”.

The Union cannot escape from shouldering with the Government the responsibility for the shortcomings and the losses that the Shipyard made during the last six years.

Because while the Government had in its hands the total management of the Shipyard from 1998 till now, following the termination of the agreement that the worker directors had in the management of the Shipyard, the European Union had, according to the restructuring plan, every year detailed and complete information of what was happening at the Shipyard.

The restructuring plan states that Malta had to provide the European Commission

“annual reports on the implementation of the plan. These reports had to include all relevant information to help the Commission evaluate the situation with respect to the implementation of the restructuring plan, including how the shipyards fixed their prices for new contracts for ship repair and ship building that are acquired by the shipyards.

The annual shipyard report on production should specify the gross compensated tonnage of works eligible to be outsourced. The Shipyard should be in a position to show all its contracts related with the granting of works that were outsourced in the case of ship building.

The restructuring plan continues to state that

“from March 2003 Malta should provide these reports within two months from the end of the year. The last report must be given by the end of March 2009, except if not otherwise agreed between the Commission and Malta”.

But the European Union was not happy with detailed information about the Shipyard to be given in the annual report.

The restructuring plan gave the Union the power to monitor what was happening in the Shipyard, because the plan also provides that

“Malta must cooperate with the control arrangements established by the Commission, including on site inspections by independent experts, during the restructuring period”.

Therefore the European Union cannot say that it didn’t know with the Shipyard disastrous management during these last years.

It knew, and it did not utter a word, because it was happy with what was happening that could lead to the Shipyard having to close and all its workers would terminate their employment.

If the European genuinely protects our country’s interests, it would apply that which the restructuring plan itself provides if the Shipyard would not have become viable by the end of next December.

In fact the plan provides that:

“If the shipyards viability could not be obtained due to exceptional circumstances and which were not foreseen when the restructuring plan was made, the European Commission can revue the plan conditions” and before doing so, “the Commission should take into consideration the views of the Member States on the existence of exceptional circumstances”.

Now there is no doubt that the financial disaster in the Fairmount conversion contract is an exceptional circumstance that occurred in the last two years and which was not foreseen in the year 2002 when the restructuring plan was made.

If there was good will from the Commission and the Union Member States do not object because of the competition that the Malta Shipyard can make with their shipyards, the plan conditions could be changed by increasing the restructuring period more than the end of this year.

But the European Commissioner Neelie Kroes does not want to hear anything because for her the European Union competition rules are more sacred than the employment of 1,700 Shipyard workers and more important than the needs of our country to continue to have a traditional industry of ship repair and shipbuilding.

The European Union never gave and was never asked to give a single euro for the Malta Shipyard.

Notwithstanding this, the Union interferes with what the Maltese Government does with the Shipyard.

The Shipyard may be another victim of our country’s membership in the Union if we do not stand up to the Union.

The public statements that the European Commissioner responsible for competition Neelie Kroes in the following year that she came to examine the Malta Government about the plan that it had made for the Shipyard, it failed it and told it to prepare a revised plan by mid-December for its reparatory examination, amount to an act of national humiliation.

This disgusting act witness that the Government democratically elected by the Maltese people is not sovereign to decide national affairs as it deems fit in the best interests of the Maltese people.

The will of the EU is superior to the will of the majority of the Maltese people.

The national interests protected by the Maltese Government must be sacrificed for the European Union competition rules.

Independently from how good or bad is the Maltese Government decision to write off the debt that the Malta Shipbuilding had made since its establishment five years ago, once the Government had decided that it is in the country’s best interests to write off that debt, it should not accept the humiliation that foreign bureaucrats not elected by the people overturn the Maltese Government’s decision.

Apart from the fact that such action by Commissioner Kroes is objectionable for a nation that boasts that it is independent the decision in itself is stupid.

Because the debt of the Malta Shipyards is in fact Government debt with the Government itself.

The Malta Shipyards are the Government’s property.

Its debt is government debt.

Its debt is due to the Government.

If the debt is not written off, the company won’t pay the government just the same.

If whoever buys the company is expected to pay its debt, the price offered for it will be reduced by the amount of the debt that will have to be paid.

Therefore the Government will collect a lower price than it would collect if the buyer is not expected to pay the debt.

This means that the debt is always a loss for the Government.

If the Malta Shipyards is dissolved, the debt will just the same not be paid to the Government.

Whatever the European Union says, the company debt will have to be borne by the Government.

After all the company belongs to the Government and the Government is responsible for its debt.

CNI encourages the workers who want to continue working in the Shipyard to set up a cooperative to take the Shipyard in their own hands together with a foreign strategic partner that can give professional efficient management and aggressive marketing to the Shipyard.

Thus the Shipyard will remain in Maltese hands and not become again a foreign maritime base.

If foreign investors calculate that they can make a profit if the Shipyard will have six hundred less workers, the workers cooperative in partnership with a strategic partner should not be lost by the Shipyard.

Once the Government would not be giving subsidies to the cooperative, it should not object that the Shipyard remains in the hands of its workers.

Thursday 17 September 2008.

WE WANT INDEPENDENCE FROM THE EUROPEAN UNION

e-mail: cnimalta at yahoo.co.uk 

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