Prime Minister Joseph Muscat was on time for his slot with PBS on the 8pm news on Thursday, but technical difficulties led to the scrapping of the visual interview and, instead, this was replaced by a telephone intervention.

The PBS news on Thursday evening started with the European Union summit in Brussels as the main headline, but the first feature was on the eagles that were shot the previous day and the government’s announcement of harsher penalties.

The Prime Minister’s intervention from the EU council came later, but the interview was carried out only by telephone as technical hitches prevented a direct visual link, sources told The Malta Independent.

The PM was available for the interview one minute before he was due to be on air, but the visual connection was not possible because of the issues that arose, the sources added.

In his interview, the Prime Minister spoke about the stand Malta took to push the EU into more concrete action on the immigration problem, a stand that bore fruit today as the EU changed its draft conclusions to take operational decisions in December, instead of postponing the talks to next June.

But the intervention lost much of its anticipated effect because there was no visual of the PM speaking, other than pre-recorded footage. This situation irked government officials who were expecting better publicity of the strong position taken by the PM.