Even in the Mediterranean the environmental agenda is taking what appears to be a swift hold

Southern Europe is not known for green government leadership. But the tiny island nation of Malta now wants to jump quickly on the bandwagon, just as long as someone else is paying.

The Maltese ought to know a few things about sustainability risk. All their water is desalinated, and some 400,000 people cram themselves into a pretty small land space you could walk across in a day. Pretty much everything is imported. The island’s rubbish tips are a sore point, particularly when the population doubles each summer.

Where to put all that trash? In landfill so far. But space is at a premium. Now the Maltese government is proud of the trees planted upon one of the largest, Maghtab, and the Malta Independent newspaper crows that it will soon be a national park, despite what lies beneath. Put it this way, you wouldn’t want to drink from a well near there.

Malta loves EU money, some 855 million Euros of it is earmarked for the country in 2007-13 and what better way to keep it flowing than to spend it on environmental initiatives?

The country, from where your correspondent has been working for a few days (surely eating out and sleeping in?, Ed) has proudly spent 8 million Euros, also of EU money, on capping and extracting gas from its Maghtab giant landfill for energy use.

Whether this is cost effective isn’t clear, but with pending elections all the politicians want to grab the limelight and announce some headlines. So it was that one said last weekend he would “re-negotiate” Malta’s deal with the EU if elected.

The European Commission reacted swiftly. “No chance”, said officials, hinting that the benefits of Malta being in the EU have been pretty much one way traffic to date.

Now Lawrence Gonzi, current Prime Minister, announced on February 12 just how much of the EU’s next large tranche of cash he’d spend on the environment if re-elected.

Despite the perhaps cynical timing (or opportunistic) Malta has some big ideas for the environment if Gonzi is to be believed. By 2013 300 million of Malta’s EU Euros from the 855 million pot will have been spent on greening the tiny island.

If only voters will mark his box with an X come election day, Gonzi says he’ll strengthen Malta’s environmental institutions, taking personal charge of them. No co-incidence perhaps, that green issues are seen as vote winners across the EU.

But his plans are ambitious, and do show just how far green thinking is spreading in the EU, though you usually don’t see much of it in many of the newest member states.

For example, Gonzi wants Malta to do its bit for climate change, since they don’t have any land to spare. So Malta will build a deep water offshore wind farm to generate 75 megawatts of clean electricity.

Plans are also afoot to expand solar energy systems for households and companies to sell power they don’t need back to the grid. Given the amount of sun Malta has, this seems like it’s worth a try.

Cars with higher emissions levels will also cost a lot more to import, and each household will be handed out five energy saving light bulbs per year for two years.

Finally, the stunning northern island of Gozo will be designated an “eco-island” (they’ve never really built that much on it anyway, so might as well) and become a “model for sustainable development”.

This will be done, says Gonzi, by developing alternative energies, better waste management and air and water pollution controls and by pushing organic farming.

All very impressive words and calculated to both help keep the early flows of EU cash pouring into Malta’s central coffers and win re-election for Gonzi.

One wonders though, how much of this would be happening without the EU’s influence.