MALTA: The EU's biggest-ever enlargement passed its crucial first popular test yesterday when voters in Malta, the union's smallest newcomer, said a quiet Yes to membership, writes Ian Black in London
Final results showed 53.6 per cent of voters in the Mediterranean island had opted to join the EU, quashing fears that a No would set off a domino effect among millions of east Europeans making a similar decision in coming months.
Mr Eddie Fenech-Adami, the leader of the ruling Nationalist Party, claimed victory in Saturday's referendum. "The electorate has given a clear-cut indication that it wanted the country to join Europe," said the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Lawrence Gonzi.
But the membership issue could be challenged in a new general election as soon as next month.
Triumphant Yes campaigners led honking motorcades through the streets of Valletta and waved EU flags alongside red-and-white Maltese ones as the results were announced. One slogan read: "Vote Yes, for us, for our children, for our country."
Mr Fenech-Adami had called for a national, not a party-political decision, arguing that it was common sense for the island's 380,000 people to join the world's most powerful economic bloc.
The No camp, led by the opposition Labour Party and the largest trade union, proposed a "partnership" with the EU but failed to explain how their "Mediterranean Switzerland" would actually work.
Mr Alfred Sant, the Labour leader, demonstratively failed to vote on Saturday, having argued that the issue should be tested in a general election, not a referendum. He had urged supporters to stay away, vote No or spoil their ballots by writing "Viva Malta".
But Mr Fenech-Adami is now expected to call an early election to consolidate Saturday's victory.
Malta's vote was the first in a series of polls over the next nine months which will seal the expansion of the union, from the current 15 to 25 members in May 2004. EU officials had been nervous about the outcome in Malta, a former British colony, because it is the only candidate country in which the main opposition party opposes membership.
Maltese divided into those who feared that staying out of the EU would leave them an isolated backwater, and those worried about national sovereignty. - (Guardian Service)
- The Minister for European affairs, Mr Dick Roche, has welcomed the results. "A positive result in Malta, where the result was expected to be very tight augers well for the series of polls to be held in the Accession states over the next few months," he said.