Ralph Cassar
In the run-up to the Budget 2026, we are getting mixed messages all over again. The finance minister talks of ‘fiscal discipline’ while the prime minister gives his usual “best budget ever” speeches. What he really means is low wages and irresponsible subsidies to prop up wasteful sectors. In the process, they are burdening us and future generations with ballooning public debt, which has already surpassed the €11 billion mark.
Borrowing could have been used to fund valuable green and social infrastructure, cutting resource use and creating meaningful jobs. Instead, this government opted for wasteful blanket fuel subsidies, exporting money rather than investing in renewables that could protect us from geopolitical risks.
This brings me to the government’s Vision 2050, a vision seemingly shared by the Nationalist Party, which called it “a step in the right direction”. ADPD-The Green Party, on the other hand, has published an alternative vision document, Green Over Greed: A Green Vision 2050. Our vision takes on the structural issues in a society geared towards growth at all costs. A well-being economy sets clear limits.
Malta cannot endlessly expand energy use, construction or consumption. Fossil fuels must be phased out. Reducing resource use and circularity must replace waste. Whatever anyone says, be it Trumpian populists or our own prime minister, nature’s boundaries are not negotiable. Equally, social limits matter. The more we allow market logic to dominate our lives, the less time we have for family, care and community.
Take this moral panic about the birth rate. What an insult to frame women as somehow responsible for providing future workers ‘for growth’. The same argument is made about education, reduced to the provision of workers, preferably work-ready for specific, narrow jobs, for the sake of the economy.
Why not make the minimum wage a decent living wage and leave families to decide freely on children, without demands on women? How about moving to a well-being economy which values people rather than ‘human resources’? A reduced population can also mean less competition for jobs, cheaper housing and less strain on social services and public infrastructure. But whatever the personal decisions of people, the important thing is that it is the economy that must adapt, not the other way round.
A key target in our vision is that of a 50 per cent share of renewable energy by 2030, from various sources, including the setting up of clean energy communities. This entails accepting limits and a move towards a post-growth mindset, on the way to a zero-carbon economy by 2050. While the government’s plan includes 4.5 million tourists by 2035, we would like to see a planned reduction in tourism, an increase in the tourist tax to fund urban regeneration administered by the regions and local councils and a plan for quality, long-term employment in the sector, rather than dependence on cheap labour models.
Overdependence on the online gambling sector is not in the country’s interest. It should be managed. The regulation of gambling, rightly so, will become more onerous all over the world, and it is irresponsible to keep expanding the sector.
A Green Vision 2050 prioritises greening economic sectors, including the energy, food and transport sectors. It significantly strengthens sectors that are not exclusively interested in profit, such as social services, non-profit organisations and cooperatives and the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) sector. Examples are the need for housing cooperatives, cooperative banks and cultural and community centres.
We need to break the cycle of short-termism and integrate social and environmental priorities in financial markets and products. Financial markets skim profit from the real economy, leaving less funding for projects that benefit society, well-being and the environment. Profit is privatised, losses are socialised and retail investors and taxpayers are the victims. The spate of defaults or near misses in the Maltese bond market are testament to the ill-effects of financial speculation.
Targeted rules for systematic evaluation of ecological and social considerations are needed to ensure money flows from the financial markets into the right kind of investments. Investment prospectuses should provide investors with important investment information in an easy-to-understand format, including information on social and environmental targets.
A 2025 Central Bank of Malta report notes many firms fail to calculate their carbon footprint, limiting clear sustainability strategies. This must change. Carbon footprints, carbon budgets and mandatory targets, in line with Malta’s obligations and tied to incentives and disincentives, are necessary. Otherwise, the so-called ‘free’ market will ‘decide’ in favour of the dirtiest, cheapest, low-wage business model.
A Green Vision 2050 brings to the forefront the need for politics and policies that address the challenges we face holistically – as an interconnected ecology. In other words, the systems and relationships between issues take centre stage. Ecologism rejects productivism – the relentless consumption of resources in the name of so-called wealth creation. What others are offering is simply more of the same. We are proposing, in clear and unambiguous terms, a true paradigm shift: green over greed.
Ralph Cassar is Secretary General of ADPD-The Green Party.
First published https://timesofmalta.com/article/moving-beyond-growth.1116999 30/09/2025
