The government has well and truly found itself between a rock and hard place after MEPs gave Leo Brincat’s nomination to the European Court of Auditors a distinct thumbs down.

The government and its Prime Minister may believe that if they bury their heads in the sand for long enough that the very long shadow of the Panama Papers would slide right past them, and that the damage incurred by the government’s abject failure to deal with the fallout would be limited and contained within the shores of this small country.

Any such hope, it turns out, was completely detached from reality. This week’s European Parliament vote against a Maltese minister’s nomination to serve on the European Court of Auditors was proof enough of that.  MEPs voting against Leo Brincat’s nomination to the ECA did not vote against Mr Brincat the man or his personal merits, they voted against what he represents – a minister from what is becoming to be perceived as the European Union’s most corrupt country.

They voted against a minister who has, with the backing of his Prime Minister and fellow Cabinet members, shamelessly clung to power despite having been exposed as party to some very dubious financial business in Panama and New Zealand.  They voted against a minister of government who supported his Cabinet colleague through thick and thin.

Even worse from an auditing perspective, they voted against a minister who supported his fellow Cabinet minister even though he had promised two full audits on his financial affairs – one by the tax commissioner himself and another by a supposedly reputable international auditing firm – that have never seen the light of day.

After all that has been said since Mr Brincat’s nomination to the ECA failed so miserably, this last one really takes the cake.  Those audits were pledged by Mr Brincat’s Cabinet colleague a full seven months ago but they are absolutely nowhere to be seen, and the minister in question, when asked recently, simply suggested to this newspaper’s journalist that ‘we should meet for a drink to talk about it’.

This question of Dr Mizzi’s missing audits has not even arisen as far as we are aware, but if Mr Brincat had been asked, how on earth could a prospective member of the European Court of Auditors explain away that one?  We may, unfortunately, never know the answer to that one and luckily for Mr Brincat, it was not asked.

It should also be pointed out how the loggerheads that the European Parliament is at with the Maltese government predates the whole Panama debacle, and in fact stretches back to the citizenship by investment programme.  As one recalls, it was the European Parliament that had voted overwhelmingly against Malta’s bid to sell Maltese, and by default European, passports. 

The EP had voted against that, overwhelmingly so, only to have been overruled by the European Commission, which had turned around and struck a deal with Malta supposedly ensuring real links with the country and a one-year residency requirement before being able to become a Maltese citizen.

Then came Panama and the naming in the papers of the only currently serving European minister – Konrad Mizzi.  Then the same minister had the nerve to tell this newspaper recently that he may, or may not, choose to appear before the EP’s Panama Papers committee if he is asked to do so.

Even at Committee stage, it transpires, as reported by this newsroom last Sunday, that it was only former Prime Minister turned MEP Alfred Sant who somehow managed to get access to a committee vote – acting as a substitute for a substitute – that allowed Mr Brincat to scrape through that vote, and by the skin of his teeth at that.

And now Mr Brincat will seek approval from the Council of Ministers in a last ditch effort to save his, and Malta’s, face.  That the Maltese government would even allow such a move in the first place has left may aghast, let alone at a point in time when Malta is on the cusp of assuming the Presidency of the European Union – in about three months’ time.

The government has learned that the Panamagate scandal stretches far from Malta’s insular shores, and it has also in the process found itself in something of a fix.  The government has to either continue pushing Mr Brincat’s nomination upstream and against all odds and against all good sense, and in the process earn itself some serious grudge points with MEPs, which Malta will need to see legislation passed through Europe during its six-month stint at the EU’s helm. 

Short of that, it will have to come up with an apolitical candidate for one of Europe’s top auditing jobs since clearly no one who has been close to Konrad Mizzi and Panamagate will be palatable to MEPs for the ECA job.