Ian Gauci Borda co-chaired the research working group of Malta’s EU presidency. He tells Craig Nicholson what it was like to host the Council of Ministers.
Malta is the EU’s smallest country, with just 0.0007 per cent of the bloc’s land area and 0.1 per cent of its population. On 1 January the country took the reins of the Council of Ministers, the EU’s most powerful policy body.
Hosting the EU presidency entails organising meetings of the Council on home turf and helping to advance its work. When prime minister Joseph Muscat looked back on Malta’s presidency in a speech to the European Parliament on 4 July, he described it as an experience he wouldn’t forget. “Who would have thought that a small island of Malta’s proportion—the size of a medium-sized European city—would have managed to chair hundreds of meetings and close very important aspects that affect the lives of so many millions of Europeans,” he said.
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