Malta Malta, officially the Republic of Malta, is an island country in Southern Europe located in the Mediterranean Sea, between Sicily and North Africa. It consists of an archipelago south of Italy, east of Tunisia, and north of Libya. The two ...

was the third

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

an member state of the

Non-Aligned Movement The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is a forum of 121 countries that Non-belligerent, are not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc. It was founded with the view to advancing interests of developing countries in the context of Cold W ...

(after charter members of

Cyprus Cyprus (), officially the Republic of Cyprus, is an island country in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Situated in West Asia, its cultural identity and geopolitical orientation are overwhelmingly Southeast European. Cyprus is the List of isl ...

and

SFR Yugoslavia The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (commonly abbreviated as SFRY or SFR Yugoslavia), known from 1945 to 1963 as the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, commonly referred to as Socialist Yugoslavia or simply Yugoslavia, was a country ...

) joining it in 1973. The country remained a part of the movement until 2004 when one of the requirements of the

2004 enlargement of the European Union The largest enlargement of the European Union (EU), in terms of number of states and population, took place on 1 May 2004. The simultaneous accessions concerned the following countries (sometimes referred to as the "A10" countries): Cyprus, ...

was for Malta to leave the Non-Aligned Movement.

European integration European integration is the process of political, legal, social, regional and economic integration of states wholly or partially in Europe, or nearby. European integration has primarily but not exclusively come about through the European Union ...

process therefore affected and limited further Maltese integration and engagement with its Non-Aligned neighbouring states. Maltese participation in the movement was motivated by advocacy of peace and development in the Mediterranean and was intensified in the aftermath of the departure of the remaining British troops from the island in 1979. Maltese association with the Non-Aligned countries during the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

was promoted by South European (

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

, Portuguese and Maltese) left wing parties closer association with the ideas of the NAM group than with the ideas of the Western European

social democracy Social democracy is a Social philosophy, social, Economic ideology, economic, and political philosophy within socialism that supports Democracy, political and economic democracy and a gradualist, reformist, and democratic approach toward achi ...

. In 1984 the country hosted the first in a series of the Mediterranean Non-Aligned Countries Ministerial Meetings. Principles of neutrality and non-alignment were included into the Constitution of Malta in 1986 as a part of a compromise deal between the ruling

Malta Labour Party The Labour Party (, PL), formerly known as the Malta Labour Party (, MLP), is the oldest List of political parties in Malta, political party in Malta, and one of the two major parties alongside the Nationalist Party (Malta), Nationalist Party. ...

the major oppositional Nationalist Party.

References

{{Foreign relations of Malta Foreign relations of Malta Political history of Malta Euromediterranean Partnership

See also

References