Growing up, I was taught that Europe is the last true bastion of democracy.
While the rest of the world courted authoritarianism, we believed that the European Union’s star-spangled banner would continue flying high.
While other countries endured coups, revolutions, and violent reprisals, we’d never need to worry about any of that happening on our soil.
“We’re Europeans, for God’s sake – the envy of the free world. The cradle of the democratic, rules-based world order.”
The very idea that we would ever need to consider turning a peace project into a war machine was unthinkable. Now, the continent’s collective military impotence is all anyone talks about.
I was born in 1995, which means I turn thirty this year. I vividly remember the trepidation about Malta’s decision to join the EU.
It felt like one small step for the continent, one giant leap forward for our country.
Malta’s transition from an insular handful of islands to an EU member state did not happen overnight. Barring obvious and visible changes like swapping Liri for Euros, there wasn’t much of a physical manifestation of this giant leap everyone kept talking about.
I began to fully understand the value of the EU’s soft power when it became apparent that Malta was on the cusp of another major transition: from an aspiring democratic nation to a sick mafia state.
Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination dispelled any delusions that this was not a terrifying turning point in our history.
As disgraced former prime minister Joseph Muscat and his government dismantled our institutions one by one, everyone quickly realised that there would be nobody left to turn to by the time they were done.
Who do you call if the police commissioner and the attorney general do not answer? Where do we find redress in a society that profits from unaddressed grievances?
In those two years it took to force the government to start a public inquiry about Daphne’s murder, the only response to those questions was: the European Union.
Were it not for the work of dedicated EU officials and elected representatives, we would not have been able to keep our campaigns alive. That is when I first understood the soft power of the European Union – the collective right to enforce decency and legal standards without violence.
At the time, the idea that a rogue member state can only go rogue for so long before the sheer mass of the EU’s bureaucracy comes bearing down upon it seemed to hold true.
Not even something as tightly woven as Joseph Muscat’s criminal enterprise could stand against such scrutiny.
For a while, one could have almost chalked it up as a win. We forced Muscat to resign. His successor was forced to implement changes in legislation which were effectively dictated to us by entities like the Venice Commission. They had to dictate those changes to us because of how belligerent we were being.
But one burning question remained unanswered: who does one elect to boot out the Labour Party if both major parties are stained by a proximity to shady business interests?
The Nationalist Party was – and still is – uncommitted to the fight against corruption.
A few significant wins like Adrian Delia’s court victory in the hospitals concession case do not make up for the fact that the party’s infrastructure depends on the same corruption that is now a lifeline for the Labour government. It also does not make up for the party’s hopeless isolationism in the face of other potential alternatives.
Its leadership is also weak. The Maltese Herald has reported extensively about yet another internecine conflict brewing between its own factions. Not one of those factions has bothered to challenge the reporting, indicating that the conflict remains ongoing.
Political parties like Momentum and ADPD remain the only plausible standard-bearers for the disenfranchised voter who’s sick of both parties.
The possibility of pluralism in our very own House of Representatives has never been as real as it is now. Nonetheless, it will remain a distant dream until these parties find a way to set aside their personal differences and collaborate on a shared agenda.
And so, where does all this leave us in the world we face now?
The fact of the matter is that we – and by we, I mean citizens who genuinely care about living in a fairer, better world – are on our own. Perhaps, as lonely as we’ve ever been in the EU’s relatively brief history.
Career politicians like EU Parliament President Roberta Metsola, President of the EU Commission Ursula Von Der Leyen, and other grandees from the European People’s Party (the EPP) are most certainly talking a lot of talk about ‘saving Europe.’
They talk a lot less about the fact that their brand of moderate politics is what killed the European dream. You cannot valiantly defend democracy against authoritarianism’s relentless assault without any valiant defenders.
More crucially, Europe’s claim as the pulsating heartbeat of global democracy just doesn’t wash anymore.
Our government and its main political adversary are compromised beyond repair. The alternatives are a long way off from being viable contenders.
Alarm bells noting Europe’s declining sovereignty have been ringing for a long time. The real problem lies in the fact that our political representatives were simply too comfortable to address them.
We the people are also to blame. For too long we’ve allowed our politicians to soothe our concerns with trivial photo-ops, meaningless declarations, and toothless resolutions that hold nobody accountable.
The fact is that the minute Europe’s attention on an issue dissipates, our politicians quickly shift it to the side, often leaving behind nothing but watered down compromises. Just look at what they’ve done to their own greatest achievements in the last couple of decades.
As we speak, European bureaucrats are kneecapping the Green Deal at the behest of major industrial lobbies.
Europe’s response to aggression in Palestine and Ukraine was nothing short of hypocritical. The net result is that the EU has now been completely out-muscled by the Trump administration on the world stage, leading to it being sidelined in both of those conversations.
All the claims about standing foursquare behind Ukraine don’t mean anything when you do not have hard power to back them up. PR tours in the Middle East will not wash off Palestinian blood from those manicured hands. Soft power is just that – soft.
The EU is so fragmented that it cannot even keep a tiny member state like Malta in check. Gone are the days in which civil society spoke to two European delegations a month about Malta’s disastrous rule of law.
True to form, the EU did just enough to pressure the Maltese government to take some measure of action but failed to see through a concerted push for accountability.
Europeans no longer have the luxury to sit back and expect their elaborate lattice of institutions to save them. It is now up to conscientious European citizens to fight back against the fascists that took over while our moderates squandered goodwill.
As Maltese people, one could argue we never even had that luxury to begin with, and that it will always be an uphill battle until we mature as a democracy.
As someone who has seen nothing but corruption throughout my entire adult life, I fully understand the value of this uphill battle, and have dedicated as much energy as I possibly could to this cause.
My sincerest hope is that you, dear readers, are willing and able to do the same.