Twenty years of Malta’s EU membership : the impact on Maltese environmental NGOs

Abstract

In this study, the researcher analyses the impact of EU accession on Maltese Environmental Non-Governmental Organisations (ENGOs), twenty years after Malta, the smallest EU-member state, joined the Union in 2004. In the run-up to EU accession, the environment was often seen as an area which would benefit from Malta’s EU membership, especially since Malta had a lack of environmental legislation and enforcement. Not surprisingly, Environmental NGOs (ENGOs) supported Malta’s EU accession. ENGOs are major protagonists in environmental politics in Malta. Their activism covers different areas, though some issues - most notably land development, and hunting of birds - are more visible and contentious in the public sphere. Environmental protest is also one of the most common types of protest in Malta.In this paper, the researcher investigates the impacts of Malta’s European Union (EU) accession on Environmental NGOs (ENGOs) through a sociological perspective, following two decades of Malta’s accession. For this purpose, the activism of ENGOs in relation to Malta’s EU accession was analysed, through political process theory and a social constructionist approach which engaged with the interpretations of the same ENGOs on the issue under analysis. For this purpose, primary data was collected through elite interviews with representatives from Malta’s major ENGOs. The main research question of this study is “how do ENGOs interpret the impacts of the EU, 20 years after Malta’s accession?” The study is a follow-up of a similar study by the same author following ten years of Malta’s EU membership.