Prime Minister Joseph Muscat stressed that Malta “will not be used by extremists” when shedding light on his thinking behind blocking an anti-immigrant group from refuelling and re-supplying here.

The government chose not to let the ship stop over last Saturday. The ship, C-Star belongs to an anti-immigration movement called Defend Europe, an organisation set up by French, Italian and German citizens

NGOs commended the Government for standing "against the far-right group Defend Europe in refusing to allow the C-Star to enter Malta."

Muscat had harsh words against the “extremist” group this morning on a radio interview with Labour party media One radio. He described them as “racist”, adding that he should “stop short of calling them a nazi-styled group”.

He believes that this position is shared by many people, and highlighted how Maltese politics distinguishes between the work needed to be done for humanitarian and security purposes, and the messages being pushed by extremist groups.

Asked about the internal warring between the PN as the leadership race soon draws to a close, Muscat firs t drew focus on how despite the election being just three months ago, it feels much longer because government has “kept up momentum”.

He said that people have noticed that results continue to be achieved, and spoke of expectations relating to more investment, work and an increase in social housing to help those not benefitting from the economic growth, in the coming weeks.

Muscat said that he cannot give advice to the PN however slammed the outgoing leader, who he described as a ‘caretaker’, for imposing direction on whoever gets elected next. He was alluding to the court applications requesting to investigate if Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi and the PM’s chief of staff Keith Schembri broke money laundering rules when they opened their secret Panama companies.

The Prime Minister said the same people who destroyed the PN during election time are continuing to do more damage. He boldly said that the PN have not realised that the “lies” spread throughout the election that backfired, are again backfiring despite being used internally this time around.