Between May and November 2025, Malta will be the President and conduct the European Committee of Ministers at the Council of Europe. It will be presiding over a body comprising 46 member states and 700 million citizens. The major aim of this Council is to promote democracy, human rights and European rights worldwide.
Malta had held the Presidency of the Council of the European Union during the first half of 2017. In that year, the Maltese Presidency had opened with the intent to focus on six areas of interest: expanding the European single market; fostering growth in the maritime sector; helping neighbouring countries with their development; implementing rules regarding asylum and immigration; improving interstate cooperation regarding criminal justice and external borders; and reducing social discrimination. The Presidency was also tasked with dealing with the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union (Brexit) after the formal notification of the intent to withdraw was received in March.
At the end of the term, Politico Europe remarked that the Maltese Presidency "turned out to be rather good." The review gave the Maltese presidency full marks on the topic of Brexit, where the Presidency kept the 27 countries negotiating against the United Kingdom unified, and on the topic of fisheries, where an agreement was made over a matter that had been open for more than a decade.
However, during a plenary session of the European Parliament in July of that year, only a few dozen members showed up to review the Maltese Presidency, leading European Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker, to call the legislative body "ridiculous" for not giving the presidency of Malta, the smallest member state of the union, the same respect it would for those of larger countries.
Many were those who held that the reason for such a lack of respect was the fact that it came on the back of a snap election called by former and disgraced Prime Minister, Joseph Muscat, a year before his term was scheduled to end. Although Muscat won the election, which was held in June, the decision to call an early election was not looked upon favourably by leaders in the European Union.
One seriously augurs that nothing similar or even worse than that will take place during the upcoming Maltese Presidency of the Council of Europe.
One makes such an assertion because the core mission of the Council of Europe is to protect and promote human rights, democracy and the rule of law in its member states.
It is pertinent, therefore, to recall what a European Parliament resolution of October 19, 2023, on the rule of law in Malta stated.
Among other things, that resolution noted that the Commissioner of Human Rights of the Council of Europe had warned that 'access to information in Malta continued to be hampered', suggesting a pattern of unwarranted secrecy within state institutions regarding information that could be of significant public interest'.
It further noted that whereas in the 2023 Rule of Law report, the Commission had underlined that there had been no further progress on access to official documents, taking into account the European Standards on the Protection of Journalists, Maltese journalists continue to face challenges in the exercise of their
Some reforms to address some of the recommendations of the Caruana Galizia's public inquiry, including draft legislation to strengthen media freedom and a proposal for an antiSLAPP law, have been undertaken but input from national and international actors remain largely ignored.
profession.
Not only that, but the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe noted on September 26, 2023, that no significant results have been obtained in bringing to justice all those responsible for the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia. The position remains the same to date.
Coupled with all this, it will surely be a thorny issue the fact that there has been no progress in the judicial proceedings against Pilatus Bank officials and the former partners of the now defunct Nexia BT and the corruption related to the ElectroGas contract that Daphne Caruana Galizia was investigating at the time of her assassination, and which were addressed in Parliament's resolution of October 20, 2022.
The rule of law in our country continues to be threatened by inadequate legal frameworks and a culture of impunity enabled by maintaining a grip on flawed institutional checks and balances that promote political interference and hamper effective enforcement, without which there can be no effective prosecutions for corruption.
European institutions are not happy that our Prime Minister has downplayed acts of institutionalised corruption.
Malta's Transparency Corruption Perception Index is now 51, dropping three points compared to 2022, and according to Transparency International, one of the main reasons behind this is political interference in the public media.
Some reforms to address some of the recommendations of the Caruana Galizia's public inquiry, including draft legislation to strengthen media freedom and a proposal for an anti-SLAPP law, have been undertaken but input from national and international actors remain largely ignored.
The Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe also noted that the recommendations of the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) continue to be ignored.
The Government must understand that it has to first ensure that its house is in order before aspiring to leave its mark during the Council of Europe Presidency and gain international recognition and honour.
Once it manages to do so, then it can truly look forward to serenely carrying out this latest prestigious mandate that would come immediately after two previous notable positions, namely that of being a member of the UN Security Council and the OSCE Chairpersonship.