01/03/2013 Malta Voters Narrowly Approve Joining European Union - New York Times

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Malta Voters Narrowly Approve Joining European UnionBy FRANK BRUNIPublished: March 10, 2003

In a referendum watched closely and sometimes nervously throughout Europe, citizens of Malta have voted to join the European Union,

according to results counted and announced by the Maltese government today.

Those results showed that 53.65 percent of voters answered yes on a ballot that asked whether Malta should join, while 46.35 percent said no, a

narrow division of opinion after years of debate on the tiny southern Mediterranean archipelago of nearly 400,000 people.

The referendum, held on Saturday, was a measure of public will and not binding on the Maltese government, which supports union

membership.

But it was the first referendum to be held in 9 of the 10 countries that have been invited to join the 15 current members of the union in its largest

expansion ever.

For that reason, the vote held powerful interest for both supporters and opponents of the union's growth. Some diplomats and European affairs

experts said the referendum's failure could have caused doubts about the virtues of joining the union among people in the countries still to vote.

European Union leaders greeted the results in Malta enthusiastically.

''This is a choice for stability and growth, as well as for the peaceful reunification of Europe and the European people,'' Romano Prodi, the

European Commission president, said in a statement released in Brussels.

Mr. Prodi praised the results as a ''historic choice which will have a lasting impact for the future of Malta.''

The public debate over whether to join the union has arguably been more intense in Malta, a former British colony, than in the other countries

expected to sign accession treaties in Athens next month and become union members next year.

That debate dominated political discourse in Malta in recent years and, as the referendum drew near, often received more news coverage than

the possibility of war in Iraq. Rallies for and against union membership drew thousands of people.

The disagreement featured dueling predictions of whether joining the union would be a boon or a bust for the Maltese economy.

''It would lead to an erosion of competitiveness for our country,'' said Joseph Muscat, a senior official with the opposition Labor Party, which

fervently opposes membership.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Muscat also said the structure of European Union government meant that a country like Malta ''really doesn't

have any type of voice.''

But the governing Nationalist Party has campaigned vigorously for membership, and the debate became a pitched political battle between two

warring sides that have swapped control of the government in Valletta, the capital, several times over the last decade.

Labor leaders said the referendum was not a clear endorsement of union membership, noting that voter turnout was about 90 percent and is

often larger in Malta. The yes votes, they said, did not represent a majority of the country's eligible voters.

They called for general elections next month, before the signing of an accession treaty, in which voters' ballots for the two parties would provide

another measure of their feelings about joining the union.

Although Malta would become the union's least populous member, Heather Grabbe, a research director for the Center for European Reform, an

independent policy group in London, said its referendum was nonetheless meaningful.

Ms. Grabbe said the debate in Malta stirred concerns about membership that could fester -- and not only in Malta. She added that if the

referendum in Malta had failed, it would have shown ''that the argument for joining the union was not being well communicated.''

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