The Economist 07Dec2019

The EconomistDecember 7th 2019 Europe 39

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I

t cost herher life. But, in the end,

Daphne Caruana Galizia, a dogged

Maltese journalist, brought down from

her grave the man she believed had al-

lowed corruption to flourish as he made

his island state progressively richer.

On December 1st Joseph Muscat, the

prime minister of Malta, announced he

was resigning. He has long denied any

wrongdoing and tried to depict his de-

parture as natural. “I always said a prime

minister should not serve for more than

two legislatures,” he said in a televised

address. But it came as Malta plunged

deeper into a crisis with its origins in

Caruana Galizia’s murder in 2017.

Mr Muscat announced his resigna-

tion the day after a local tycoon, Yorgen

Fenech, was charged with complicity in

the killing. Mr Fenech pleaded not guilty.

According to Caruana Galizia’s son, Paul,

before her death his mother was in-

vestigating links between Mr Fenech, a

gas deal with Azerbaijan and two senior

figures in Mr Muscat’s government: his

chief of staff, Keith Schembri, and the

former energy minister, Konrad Mizzi. A

report by the Council of Europe found

that a Dubai-registered company owned

by Mr Fenech was due to make large

payments to Panamanian-registered

companies belonging to the two poli-

ticians. Both deny any wrongdoing.

Mr Muscat delayed his departure. He

said his party would start choosing a new

leader on January 12th. He would step

down as prime minister “in the days

after”. That announcement sparked

heated clashes in Parliament, a demon-

stration on the streets of the capital,

Valletta, and claims that Mr Muscat

intended to hobble the investigation

before he left office. Mr Muscat rejected

this. “Justice is being done. And I will see

that justice is for everyone,” he said.

Caruana Galizia died when a bomb

planted in her car exploded as she left her

home. Three men charged with her

murder are yet to be tried. Last month a

fourth man offered information on the

killing in return for immunity from

prosecution. He testified in court on

December 4th that he had paid the al-

leged killers on behalf of Mr Fenech, who

was the sole organiser of the murder. But

he added that, after the men were arrest-

ed, he was asked by a member of the

prime minister’s entourage to tell them

they would get bail and €1m ($1.1m) each.

Bail was not granted and the money

apparently was not paid.

Ministers (including Mr Muscat) have

been pelted with eggs,mps from rival

parties have almost come to blows, and

on December 2nd the opposition boy-

cotted Parliament as Mr Muscat gave a

farewell speech. He leaves a country that

is far richer (growth has averaged 7.2% on

his watch), but one that is as troubled as

it is troubling.

Revenged

Malta

Malta’s prime minister is forced out by the work of a murdered journalist

From bey ond the grave

F

rance wasthis week nervously await-

ing the start of a rolling general strike on

December 5th, which looked set to disrupt

roads, railways, airports and schools. On

day one the sncf, the national railway

company, said that only one in ten trains

would run. Teachers, hospital workers and

even lawyers promised to join in. In protest

at President Emmanuel Macron’s upcom-

ing pension reform, the strikes mark a re-

turn to the streets of France’s unions. Re-

cently eclipsed as the face of protest by the

gilets jaunes(yellow jackets), they are now

keen to flex their own muscles and try to

force Mr Macron to back down, just as the

gilets jaunesmanaged last year.

The strike was called against Mr Mac-

ron’s pension plan, an election-manifesto

pledge in 2017. This is designed not to curb

overall spending on pensions, which

amounts to 14% of gdpin France, com-

pared with an oecdaverage of 8%. Nor does

it raise the legal minimum retirement age

of 62 years, on the low side for the oecd. It

aims, rather, to merge France’s tangle of 42

different mandatory pension regimes into

a single, points-based system. The idea is

to make the rules more transparent, sim-

pler and fairer.

The reason for the collective fury is

threefold. First, unlike his predecessors,

Mr Macron has decided to use this reform

to end pensions with special privileges, the

so-called régimes spéciaux, which he argues

“belong to another era”. Indeed some such

regimes, such as that covering the Paris Op-

era, date back to the 17th century under

Louis XIV. Naturally, the beneficiaries of

such schemes, such as train drivers who

can retire at the age of 50 (rising thanks to

earlier reforms, but only to 52 by 2024), will

not give them up without a fight. Second,

although France’s overall pension system

is in deficit, some of these regimes are well

managed and balance their books. Law-

yers, for instance, fear that their virtue in

maintaining a solvent, sustainable pen-

sion scheme will be punished under the

merged system. They worry that they will

be made to contribute more for the same

rights that they enjoy today.

Third, the government has spent so

long consulting over its long-promised

pension reform that it has ended up gener-

ating more anxiety about the outcome than

goodwill about the discussions. Nobody

knows quite what their future entitle-

ments will be. The government, stuffed

with brainy technocrats (Mr Macron him-

self being one of them), talks in incompre-

hensible jargon about “systemic” versus

“parametric” reform. Mr Macron has ruled

PARIS

A new wave of strikes threatens to shut

down France

France

Brace for impact

spent in 2016.

In June the alliance agreed its first-ever

space policy, building on the creation of

new space units in America, France and

Britain over the past year. And to the Penta-

gon’s further delight, the declaration from

the leaders acknowledged that “China’s

growing influence and international poli-

cies present both opportunities and chal-

lenges” for the alliance.

On December 3rd one European leader

could be heard joking with another that Mr

Macron had inadvertently employed the

sort of reverse psychology used by parents

against toddlers. Mr Macron’s sharp criti-

cism of natoseemed to have persuaded Mr

Trump that the alliance was a good idea

after all. “What I’m liking about natois

that a lot of countries have stepped up, I

think at my behest.” 7