The Economist - USA (2019-12-07)

The EconomistDecember 7th 2019 Europe 51

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I

t costherherlife.But,intheend,

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.Butit cameasMaltaplunged

deeperintoa crisiswithitsoriginsin

CaruanaGalizia’smurderin2017.

MrMuscatannouncedhisresigna-

tionthedayaftera localtycoon,Yorgen

Fenech,waschargedwithcomplicityin

thekilling.MrFenechpleadednotguilty.

AccordingtoCaruanaGalizia’sson,Paul,

beforeherdeathhismotherwasin-

vestigatinglinksbetweenMrFenech,a

gasdealwithAzerbaijanandtwosenior

figuresinMrMuscat’sgovernment:his

chiefofstaff,KeithSchembri,andthe

formerenergyminister,KonradMizzi.A

reportbytheCouncilofEuropefound

thata Dubai-registeredcompanyowned

byMrFenechwasduetomakelarge

paymentstoPanamanian-registered

companiesbelongingtothetwopoli-

ticians.Bothdenyanywrongdoing.

MrMuscatdelayedhisdeparture.He

saidhispartywouldstartchoosinga new

leaderonJanuary12th.Hewouldstep

downasprimeminister“inthedays

after”.Thatannouncementsparked

heatedclashesinParliament,a demon-

strationonthestreetsofthecapital,

Valletta,andclaimsthatMrMuscat

intendedtohobbletheinvestigation

beforeheleftoffice.MrMuscatrejected

this.“Justiceisbeingdone.AndI willsee

thatjusticeisforeveryone,”hesaid.

CaruanaGaliziadiedwhena bomb

plantedinhercarexplodedasshelefther

home.Threemenchargedwithher

murderareyettobetried.Lastmontha

fourthmanofferedinformationonthe

killinginreturnforimmunityfrom

prosecution.Hetestifiedincourton

December4ththathehadpaidtheal-

legedkillersonbehalfofMrFenech,who

wasthesoleorganiserofthemurder.But

headdedthat,afterthemenwerearrest-

ed,hewasaskedbya memberofthe

primeminister’sentouragetotellthem

theywouldgetbailand€1m($1.1m)each.

Bailwasnotgrantedandthemoney

apparentlywasnotpaid.

Ministers(includingMrMuscat)have

beenpeltedwitheggs,mps fromrival

partieshavealmostcometoblows,and

onDecember2ndtheoppositionboy-

cottedParliamentasMrMuscatgavea

farewellspeech.Heleavesa countrythat

isfarricher(growthhasaveraged7.2%on

hiswatch),butonethatisastroubledas

it istroubling.

Revenged

Malta

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

Frombeyondthegrave

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