Borg-gate: Joe Borg Revisited

In which J’accuse steals a guest post from The Running Commentary where Patrick Tabone offers an ex-employee’s apologia pro Joe Borg and his work as a Commissioner. Patrick Tabone, a former employee of Joe Borg in Brussels and at the Foreign Ministry offers a different perspective of the outgoing Commissioner that might force some people to think twice before insisting with the ‘gravy train’ allegations.

Read on for Patrick’s open letter to Daphne.

Dear Daphne,

You’ve gone into attack mode against Joe Borg following his outburst in the Sunday Times. Your blog, your prerogative. But whatever you think about that interview, his years of service deserve a much fuller appraisal than it appears you are ready to give them.

Until recently I had the privilege of working with Joe Borg for many years, both in Malta and in Brussels. It would be simplistic and wrong to assume that every single politician is a prat or a crook, though many are both.

Joe Borg is one of the few I have seen who is in it for all the right reasons – he’s not on an ego trip, he’s not after personal gain, but he has always wanted to be of service. He firmly believed that Malta should join the European Union, and that we have a role to play in Europe, and he has made it his life’s work first to help get us into the EU, and then to help make a success of membership.

He held fast to this vision for years in a technical capacity, and then successfully steered the accession and negotiation process for the previous PM in his capacity as Foreign Minister.

He has a rare combination of detailed technical knowledge and a quick political brain, which meant that he was usually several steps ahead of his counterparts in the accession negotiations. At the same time his ability to be very bull-headed in the nicest possible way helped ensure that Malta made gains in the negotiations that were far in excess of those made by any other candidate country.

All of this was done, moreover, in unprecedentedly close consultation with every interest group, constituted body and representative association on the island.

He was the obvious choice as the first Maltese Commissioner and he managed a horribly complicated and politically thankless portfolio in Brussels in a way that has won him respect in all the EU capitals.

He had the courage to say what was rotten about the Common Fisheries Policy, made important advances in improving some of its worst features, and has set the scene for a far-reaching reform that offers at least the opportunity of a long-term future for Europe’s fish and fishermen. For this work on sustainable fisheries he was recognised and awarded an international prize by the environmentally conscious Swedes.

With Maritime Policy he was given something of a poisoned chalice by President Barroso. There have been many prior attempts over the years to create an integrated approach to European maritime affairs, but all had previously failed and petered out without a trace.

This is because creating this integrated approach requires encroaching on the competences of all the Commissioners responsible for shipping, environment, energy, industry and many others – a trick that no-one had previously come even close to pulling off.

In the face of initial widespread scepticism he managed to get all these Commissioners and their Directorates General to co-operate, created a groundswell of support for the project in every maritime area in Europe, and translated this momentum into a new, well established, European Integrated Maritime Policy that in five short years is firmly entrenched and pretty much irreversible.

In the process he transformed DG FISH from an obscure Directorate General full of largely ineffective fisheries experts into the well-respected and far more influential DG MARE that leads or is consulted on any issue that touches the marine. For managing this task that nobody really thought was possible he was given the prestigious Elisabeth Mann Borgese award from the Government of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany for ‘outstanding achievements for the seas’.

Throughout this time, like any good European Commissioner, he has always remembered where he comes from, and has made sure that his colleagues in the Commission always understood Maltese realities and took them into account, even when it was painfully lonely and uncomfortable to make the case.

All those who worked with him or for him, whether they agreed with him or not, have never doubted his integrity or fundamental decency. Joe Borg is that rare thing, an international success story from Malta. You can disagree with his outburst as much as you like, but it would really be a pretty poor show if we let this episode overshadow all that went before it.

Two last points. Firstly, all this talk of pigs at troughs is just as facile, petty and unworthy today as it was when used by the opponents of membership to tar anyone working for accession. And secondly, if ‘good breeding’ is what makes a gentleman then Joe Borg is very well bred indeed.

The PM more than anyone knows how loyally and well Joe Borg has served Malta and Europe, and must be mortified that it has come to this. Let’s leave them to it, drop the subject, and let them find a way to pick up the pieces in time.

Thanks for the space.

Patrick Tabone