The Secretariat of the Conference of Speakers and Presiding Officers of the Commonwealth have acceded to the request by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Anġlu Farrugia, to fill a vacant British Isles and Mediterranean Region’s seat on the Standing Committee of the CSPOC.
During the 22nd Conference of Speakers and Presiding Officers, held in New Zealand in 2014, Speaker Farrugia invoked the Standing Rules of the Conference and argued that it was inequitable for the BIMR seat to be always taken up by the British Delegation and that no possibility existed for other sovereign states, like Malta, to take up this seat in turn.
At the meeting, upon the insistence of Speaker Farrugia, it was decided that consultations were to start in order to find a solution to this impasse.
During the Conference of Speakers of European Parliaments, held in Rome on 20 and 21 April, Speaker Anġlu Farrugia was informed by the UK delegation that a vacancy on the Standing Committee will arise by virtue of the fact that the United Kingdom will, until 2020, occupy an ex officio seat on the Standing Committee, since it shall be hosting the conference in 2018.
Following Anġlu Farrugia’s continued interest to partake in the proceedings of this distinguished Commonwealth Parliamentary forum and following consultation with the member states of the BIMR, it was agreed that the Speaker of the Parliament of Malta is to be appointed as the new representative for the Region on the Standing Committee of the CSPOC.