WGA 2020 | Malta

Introduction

Question:
Briefly reflect about when and why a WGA has/hasn’t been introduced in your country. In what ways does a WGA in your country reflect the country’s specificities (e.g. in relation to its institutional and constitutional set-up)?

Malta Expert

Roderick Pace

Professor, Institute for European Studies, University of Malta

Roderick Pace is a resident full-time Professor at the Institute for European Studies of the University of Malta, where he held a Jean Monnet Chair. His research and teaching cover world politics, the external relations of the EU, Euro-Mediterranean relations and small states in world politics. He has published on Malta in the EU and Maltese politics. Since 2009, he has been on the editorial board of the journal South European Society and Politics, published by Taylor and Francis. He has over 120 academic works, including books, co-edited books, articles, chapters and papers. Pace co-founded and served as the Director of the Institute for European Studies from 1990 to 2016. He holds a BA (Honours) in Philosophy from the University of Malta; an MA in International Affairs from the School of Advanced International Studies (Bologna Center) of the Johns Hopkins University, and a PhD in Politics from the University of Reading (UK). His latest article (2019) is ‘Malta and the European Union’ in The Oxford Encyclopedia of European Union Politics.

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Malta has not developed a whole-of-government approach (WGA) regarding external conflicts and crises, and there are several likely reasons for this. The first is that the concept is new in the sense that, until recently, international crises have been seen as falling almost exclusively in the domain of foreign affairs, with the result that they were primarily handled by diplomatic bodies. During its entire post-independence period, Malta was mainly preoccupied with its own security and building its statehood.

Malta’s small size, its population of less than half a million (Eurostat 2019), its limited resources and its policy of neutrality and non-alignment during the Cold War further accentuated this approach of standing on the sidelines, so to speak. However, since becoming an EU member state, new opportunities have arisen for Malta to participate in regional and global efforts. Historically, it has tended to become more involved (though to varying degrees) in crises occurring in the Mediterranean region and whose consequences have a direct impact on its security and well-being. An example of this was Malta’s role during the 2011 civil war in Libya.

In general, Malta prefers to act through EU-led initiatives (e.g. CSDP missions) rather than through UN-led ones, as exemplified by its participation in UNIFIL (Lebanon) and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

Malta Report