The EU Single Market for Malta: full market access, or a market difficult to access?
At Monday’s Malta Business Bureau (MBB) conference, the message was clear: while the EU Single Market is the best thing to come out of the EU and still offers immense potential, it is evident that not all Member States are created equal. A ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, with mainland EU in mind, creates disproportionate challenges for an island economy like ours. To secure Malta’s competitiveness, we must tackle the lingering barriers – from high transport costs to complex regulation – that businesses still face after twenty years.
Mario Xuereb, MBB’s CEO opened the conference by emphasising that Europe’s Single Market “shouldn’t be a bureaucratic hurdle; it must be a ‘power tool’ for growth.” Where the Single Market must take “into consideration member state diversity adequately.”
William Spiteri Bailey, The Malta Chamber’s President, remarked that, “we want the EU to start thinking small.” He urged European counterparts to remain receptive to issues arising from permanent structural barriers Maltese businesses will aways face. On a similar tone, Tony Zahra, the MHRAPresident, asserted that, “the single market helped in no small way the significant development of the tourism industry in Malta, but the EU should remain cautious of introducing excessive regulatory burdens which hinders further growth”.
The Single Market remains a net positive for Malta’s recent economic model, offering access to 450 million consumers, €17.1 trillion of GDP and enabling the free movement of goods, services, capital, and people. However, Maltese businesses continue to face structural challenges linked to our geographical location, high transport costs not faced by mainland Europe, regulatory fragmentation, and the disproportionate cost of compliance relative to larger Member States.
The Conference on the European Union’s Single Market brought together senior figures from the European Commission, European Parliament, Maltese Government, Opposition, and private sector to discuss the EU’s published Single Market Strategy[1] and its implications for Malta’s small island open economy.
During the first panel on ‘Eliminating Barriers for Movement of Goods’ speakers from the manufacturing, pharma, and legal sectors pointed to the labyrinth of rules, over-regulation, and territorial supply constraints leading to rising costs of upstream goods. The panel lauded the Commission for the recognition of barriers within the single market as a good start, especially as these barriers do not exist in other economic powerhouses, such as the USA and China. More can be done to help Maltese businesses navigate the Single Market, such as incentivising the maritime transport industry to decarbonise rather than penalise it with the ETS, to invest in digitalisation to bridge innovation gaps and to exhaust all possible use of EU and national funding to minimise structural island barriers.
The second panel on ‘Expanding Cross-Border Service Provision’ brought up points on most of the economic growth in the EU is coming from the services industry, whilst itself is facing the largest barriers in the single market. Following a more existential tone, the panel reaffirmed the urgency to eliminate all barriers in the single market, to drive economic growth, as this is vital for the EU to maintain politically relevance on a global stage. Closing off with a strong mandate for advocacy for Maltese business interests in Brussels: it is critical to have the adequate resources to engage with EU legislation even before they are proposed.
The conference was also addressed by Economy Minister Silvio Schembri, EU Funds Minister Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi, the Shadow Minister for the Economy Jerome Caruana Cilia, the head of the EC Representation in Malta Dr Maria Elena Despott and MEP Peter Agius. Closing the event, MBB reaffirmed its commitment to representing Maltese business interests at an EU level, especially in an ever-busier EU-policy landscape. After setting the ball rolling for a local discussion on the single market, MBB will continue to monitor the development of the Single Market Strategy and ensure that the realities of small island economies are included in its implementation.
