The Council of Europe’s anti-corruption watchdog – the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO), found that Malta had failed to implement one of its nine recommendations, and that it has only partially implemented four others.
The recommendation that was outright not implemented dealt with members of Parliament and updating their code of ethics. GRECO had recommended that “a thorough review of the current provisions of the Code of Ethics for members of Parliament and the Standing Orders related to integrity, ethics, financial/activity declarations and conflicts of interest be undertaken with a view to adopting improvements that will provide more subject matter coverage, consistency and clarity, as well as guidance.” However, this was not done.
GRECO took note of attempts during the last legislature, where there was a proposed new code of ethics that was drafted, but that this was still at an early stage. Then, the elections came round and the Maltese authorities had said that the dissolution of the House of Representatives and the electoral process had affected the work in progress, as regarding the review of the Code of Ethics for Parliamentarians. “According to the authorities, this will be resumed shortly alongside usual Parliamentary work”, Greco wrote. However, the watchdog noted that ‘no tangible progress’ was achieved.
This is a shame. The former Standards Commissioner, George Hyzler, had said in 2020 about the proposed revised codes of ethics for MPs and ministers that he had worked on, that “the revised codes are intended to strengthen the ethical standards applying to MPs and ministers, and reinforce the framework of accountability within which Malta’s governing institutions operate.” Through the draft for the revised codes at the time, it was reported that, among many other things, a register for gifts, benefits and hospitality was to be established. In this, MPs would need to duly record not only gifts, benefits and hospitality received, but also those bestowed by them to third parties, if such gifts are related to their Parliamentary or political activities.
They were proposed codes of ethics which aimed to bring about higher standards… yet it seems that nothing came of them. The question that comes to mind is… why? Why didn’t Parliament dedicate more time to this issue?
The updating of the Codes of Ethics should be brought back to the top of the agenda. That draft should be further debated and, if need be, strengthened.
There was another point regarding MPs that was mentioned by GRECO, with regards to another of its recommendations, one that dealt with supervision and enforcement that was partially implemented.
“Appropriate supervision and enforcement systems of the rules on declaration of assets, interests and outside activities by means of effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions are also still lacking”. it had concluded.
Let’s be frank, MPs in Malta don’t seem to be fazed by bad press for wrongdoing. So the only way to really ensure that none step out of line is to impose dissuasive sanctions. Clearly GRECO does not think that what Malta has done is enough thus far.
Another recommendation for MPs dealt with establishing confidential counselling for MPs, in order to give them advice on ethical dilemmas, conflicts of interest, etc, and also to provide awareness raising activities for MPs on the aforementioned issues and others. This was only partially recommended, and GRECO felt that more was needed in this regard.
Parliament should get working on the implementation of these three recommendations. MPs who stick to the rules and who have the best interest of the country in mind would have no problem with their implementation. It also makes sense to ensure that awareness raising is adequate, so as to ensure MPs are informed about what they should and shouldn’t do.
The other recommendations that were only partially implemented dealt with the judiciary – one recommendation was on strengthening judicial accountability, and the other was as regarding judicial training and mentoring. On the former, GRECO acknowledged achievements in respect of judicial disciplinary procedures, “and the current intention by the authorities to take steps to improve the transparency of complaints processes”, but said that the actual situation was unchanged - no published statistics of complaints received, types of breaches and sanctions, etc. The issue seems to be with transparency and, realistically speaking, this could be an easy fix if all it takes is the publication of such information. Transparency, after all, is an important aspect of any democracy.
On the latter, it noted that “induction training programmes for newly appointed judges, as well as in-service training need to be reinforced, together with targeted guidance and counselling on corruption prevention and judicial ethics.” This latter point could also be easily solved.
As seen above, most of the recommendations by GRECO are easily implemented.