Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The Nationalist Party government formally
applied for European Community membership
in 1990. Three years later, publication of a
favourable
Opinion
by the European Commis-
sion saw EU-Malta relations oriented towards
the goal of accession. However, the coming to
power of a nationalist, anti-Europe Labour
government in October 1996 saw Malta's appli-
cation for EU membership placed in abeyance,
only for accession negotiations to recommence
in September 1998 with a return to government
of the Nationalist Party. Five months later
the European Commission recommended that
accession negotiations should commence by
the end of 1999; but reports in the Maltese press
suggested that Brussels was concerned about
the country's anti-EU membership lobby. Led
by the opposition Labour Party, this movement
appeared to be better organized and more vocal
than pro-accession supporters. The message
was clear that the Maltese government urgently
needed to crystallize a distinctive policy frame-
work favouring EU membership as other appli-
cant countries had done (Manduca, 1999).
Despite a deeply divisive internal party
political structure, the European Commission's
1999
Regular Report
(EC, 1999b) concluded
that Malta was a functioning market economy
and should be able to cope with competitive
pressures and market forces within the EU,
although it needed to continue with industrial
restructuring (Hall, 2000b). The EU leaders'
meeting in Helsinki in December 1999 formally
invited Malta, along with five other applicants,
to start accession talks, and negotiations with
the EU were brought to a successful conclusion
in December 2002. In Malta's subsequent refer-
endum of March 2003, a 53.65% majority vote
in favour of membership led the government to
call a general election in the following month.
The governing Nationalist Party won 51.7%
of the vote based on a 96% turnout, reinforcing
the government's confidence to confirm accept-
ance of the package presented to Malta by the
European Union for accession in May 2004.
In 1971, the Government of Cyprus
entered into negotiations with the EEC and in
December 1972 an association agreement was
signed between the two parties. This was one of
the EEC's first such treaties, aiming to establish
a customs union within a period of 10 years.
The agreement came into force the following
year with arrangements intended to benefit
the population of the whole island. As noted
in Chapter 1, Cyprus was politically divided in
1974 when a coup backed by Athens to annex
the island to Greece triggered a Turkish military
occupation of the north (Fig. 16.1). The political
and economic consequences of these actions
delayed full implementation, such that a second
stage of the Association Agreement was only
signed in Luxembourg in 1987, with provisions
for a customs union between 'Cyprus' and the
EU to be completed by 2003 at the latest.
In 1990 the (South) Republic of Cyprus
applied to join the European Community. The
European Commission's 1993
Opinion
consi-
dered Cyprus to be eligible for membership, and
'in expectation of progress on the political pro-
blem' (i.e. reunification) confirmed that the EC
was ready to start the process with Cyprus that
should lead to its eventual accession (EC, 1997).
Substantive accession negotiations began
in November 1998. Prior to the important
December 1999 Helsinki summit, the European
Commission's report on (the Republic of) Cyprus'
progress towards EU accession concluded that it
had fulfilled the Copenhagen political criteria,
was a functioning market economy able to cope
with the competitive pressures and market forces
within the EU, but should accelerate progress
towards privatization (EC, 1999c). This was a
similar response to that for Malta. However,
there was a caveat: Cyprus needed to adopt
several pieces of sectoral legislation to permit
alignment with the environment
acquis
,and
needed to reinforce administrative capacity in
the maritime transport and environment sectors
(EC, 1999c).
The EU position on political division was
that the status quo imposed by the Turkish
invasion of 1974 and the continued occupa-
tion by Turkish troops of 37% of the island's
territory, was unacceptable. The EU supported
the efforts of the United Nations to reach a
negotiated and comprehensive settlement that
would respect the sovereignty, independence,
territorial integrity and unity of the country
within a bi-communal and bi-zonal federation.
These principles - the Ghali 'set of ideas'
established by the UN Secretary General
Boutros Boutros-Ghali in 1992 and endorsed
by the UN Security Council - stipulated that
EU membership should be decided upon only
