The Opposition will present a motion to repeal a Legal Notice that granted the Director General of the Courts power to erase judgements from the court’s website.

The Opposition was reacting to a Legal Notice granting Malta’s director-general of law courts the authority to erase court judgements from a public government website, without any criteria being laid down.

The Legal Notice in question reads: “The Director General  (Courts) shall, subject to the provisions of the Data Protection Act, have the function and power to determine whether a person has valid grounds to exercise the right of erasure of personal data in respect of the content of a court judgment published online on the website of the Court Services Agency”

“The right of erasure of personal data from a court judgment published on the website of the Court Services Agency shall be given effect either by anonymising the judgment or any part thereof or by removing the judgment from the said website”

“The Director General (Courts) has the discretion in deciding upon an application for the exercise of the right of erasure of personal data from a court judgment published on the website of the Court Services Agency,” the legal notice read.

Asked about this legal notice, PN MP Karol Aquilina said: “I can confirm that the Opposition will present a motion to cancel the legal notice, as we feel that this is abuse of the system and there should not be a person in the State Agency that has the right and power to delete judgements that are necessary to be public. We are against there being this discretion of abuse that happens with the deletion of judgements that are in the public interest to be public.”