On 31 July, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi and Minister George Pullicino filed a libel case against newspaper and website New Europe in the First Instance Court of Brussels, asking for €25,000 each on the grounds that they were offended by an interview published on 27 February, 2012, (statements by Captain Paul Watson head of NGO Sea Shepard), though neither their names nor their government was mentioned.
The comments made by Paul Watson were referring to bluefin tuna, a species facing extinction, which is fished in Malta.
This paper reported extensively on the case on 26 September. To our knowledge, there has been no reaction from the Government of Malta so far.
Obviously, this paper will not enter into the merits of the case, seeing as it is under contention.
However, some revelations on the background of the case were made and these do merit consideration and some reflection. Again, there has so far, to our knowledge, been no clarification on the issues that were raised or any disputation of the series of events as outlined by New Europe.
New Europe said: “Following the documents given to us by the Court, New Europe was made aware of a letter from the Minister of Resources George Pullicino sent to us on 30 April (via a law firm and not via the Press Office of the Maltese Embassy in Brussels). The letter was never received, otherwise we would have published it immediately.”
In preparing its defence and counter-suit, however, New Europe found a fische d’infraction (same dates referring to the “voluntary” contingency measures of the minister) and the relevant mise en demeure letter of the Commission which claim the opposite, i.e.“Malta replied to the letter of formal notice of November 30 (2007). The Maltese authorities have recognised the failures mentioned by the Commission.”
New Europe added: “In their lawsuit against New Europe, Gonzi and Pullicino claim that we did not contact them to get their opinion before publishing the Watson interview (we publish in a free and democratic country, Belgium, and we never follow such practice).
“This time, before making this publication, we invited Mr Gonzi and Mr Pullicino (directly and through their Permanent Representation of Malta to the EU in Brussels) to comment on the Commission’s documents, which contradict the statements of the Resources minister, we have not received any response.”
“Following what seemed to be measures which do not comply to standard press relations for a European country, the Maltese government did not use the tools present in Brussels on its behalf to try to contact the newspaper and make its discomfort with the article in question known, instead it used a letter which was never delivered, and a very general email address to forward on its claim, which only reached our spam files.”
Now all this, unless contradicted by the government, the minister and the Permanent Representation, is very worrying.
The government is represented in Brussels by its Permanent Representative. (Maybe, to be quite fair, all this happened in those turbulent days before and after the ousting of Richard Cachia Caruana from his post ).
So why, then leave the matter of clarifying the government’s stance in the hands of a private law firm which then, to further complicate matters, sent an email from a generic address which ended in the spam folders of New Europe? (There is a lesson here as well: newspapers should periodically check their spam folders).
Why then was New Europe not contacted, as many firms routinely do, to check that the email had gone through?