The Home Affairs Ministry has confirmed that Malta was not invited to attend an emergency security meeting held in Paris on Sunday following the terrorist attacks "since it is only countries who are susceptible to terror attacks who were invited".
The ministry was replying to questions sent by this newsroom if new home affairs minister Carmelo Abela was invited to attend and if he was and did attend, what the outcome of the meeting was.
A group photo of those present released online after the Paris meeting did not include Mr Abela. Reportedly, only a handful of EU ministers attended along with US attorney general Eric Holder.
The ministers who attended were from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the UK. The meeting was also attended by the EU's counter-terrorism coordinator and the EU commissioner for home affairs.
The ministers assembled in Paris in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack, for an emergency meeting on counter-terrorism measures held on the initiative of French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve. He made the announcement that he had invited his American and European counterparts to Paris for an emergency summit at a press conference on Thursday 8 January.
Two days after the attack on the satirical paper that left 12 dead and several more badly injured, the debate on the European coordination of counter-terrorism is being pushed up the agenda.
Reportedly, top officials who attended the international ministerial meeting in Paris vowed an immediate response to last week's Charlie Hebdo attack. The meeting was held a few hours before the massive public rally which attracted around 1.2 million people. Dozens of world leaders joined in the protest march, including Malta's Prime Minister Joseph Muscat.
"Only if we work together, through sharing of information, by pooling our resources, will we ultimately be able to defeat those who are in a struggle with us about our fundamental values," said Mr Holder said.
During the meeting, a list of policy priorities to tackle what is seen as the growing threat of foreign fighters returning home, was laid out.
Another meeting is expected to be held this coming Sunday for Home Affairs ministers in Brussels.
Spain wants to change Schengen rules
Spain wants to see the Schengen treaty modified to allow border controls to be restored to limit the movements of Islamic fighters returning to Europe from the Middle East, a report said on Sunday.
"We are going to back border controls and it is possible that as a consequence it will be necessary to modify the Schengen treaty," Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz told the daily El Pais ahead of Sunday's ministerial meeting on the subject in Paris.
A US Justice Department official said ahead of the meeting that it would "include discussions on addressing terrorist threats, foreign fighters and countering violent extremism."
The March 1995 Schengen agreement removed passport checks on the EU's internal borders. A total 26 European nations currently have signed the Schengen agreement, 22 of them EU members.