An ongoing controversy over the services that Maltese banks provide to citizens has made it clear that banks have reduced the services offered to depositors while increasing their fees. It is also evident that analysts who follow the operations of Maltese banks expect them to perform better as depository banks.

In the meantime, they also function as banks available to lend for productive investments, construction projects and real estate transactions. This means that despite their relatively small size, they must also operate as medium to long-term investment banks, while maintaining the mentality of a medium-sized commercial bank.

To make matters worse, since the financial crisis of 2008-2021, they have had to adopt new and complicated rules regarding the management of their capital base. Moreover, they have been linked to other regulations made necessary by the EU’s desire to establish a banking union and to eradicate money laundering.

The “big” Maltese banks can’t juggle all these balls in the air. Those most affected as a result have been small depositors.

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EUROPEAN CONSTITUTION

The proposal to create, from the next elections to the European Parliament, constituencies covering the territory of several Member States so that they can be contested by “transnational” parties has gained ground in recent years. The idea was originally presented by French President Macron.

In order to alleviate some of the resistance it encountered, a number of measures were inserted to make the idea more appealing, but they instead succeeded in making it more confusing.

I do not understand how the proposal itself is supposed to help stimulate greater interest in the European elections among citizens and how it will in fact encourage them to vote in European Parliament elections. I wonder, for example, whether Maltese voters will show greater interest in such elections and go out to vote in greater numbers simply because Malta is part of a constituency which includes Slovak or Slovenian territory.

However, the good souls who spend their lives in the so-called Brussels bubble think otherwise.

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PEGASUS

There has been an outcry over spying that has happened (and still happens, no doubt) via software created by Israeli-labeled company Pegasus. It is deployed and marketed “commercially” with great success. Its advantage is that it infiltrates the mobile phones of political and economic personalities, records all the information it finds there and transmits it to customers.

I found it curious that such an outcry should occur. Obviously, the way this software is used is outrageous. But it seemed like that hadn’t happened for a long time, between friends, enemies and competitors.

Even as the Pegasus affair continued to cause scandal, we were able to see once again the extent to which double standards prevail in this area. The spying that my friends and I organize on anyone hostile to us carries its own justification. What our adversaries and competitors attempt in the same way against us deserves total condemnation.