Repubblika is encouraging the European Commission to seriously investigate the government's magisterial inquiry amendment bill in relation to the requirements of Article 2 of the European Union treaty, which states that the EU is founded, among other things, on the values of respect for the rule of law.

The NGO said the bill, officially known as Bill No.125 and entitled 'An Act to further amend the Criminal Code, Chapter 9', will amount to a breach of the non-regression principle established by the Court of Justice of the European Union.

In its statement issued on Wednesday, Repubblika remarked that this bill refines and consolidates the government's effort to reduce any resistance to corruption and organised crime and to guarantee the impunity of those who commit it. It continued that the bill is a direct attack on the "last drop of the rule of law", and referred to the bill as an "act of intimidation against civil society activists and journalists who campaign against corruption or report on it".

The NGO continued that the proposed amendments are also a major invasion by the executive branch on the long-standing tradition of judicial independence in the field of magisterial inquiries.

"We maintain that this measure amounts to a regression in the country's structural capacity to safeguard the rule of law and, consequently, that this constitutes a breach of the government's constitutional obligation to protect the rule of law and to govern democratically, as well as a breach of Malta's obligation under the European Union Treaty to guarantee the rule of law," Repubblika said.

It remarked that the bill amends the Criminal Code and "drastically weakens the right of individuals to petition for magisterial inquiries, to the point where the right is effectively extinguished". It added that the new law effectively makes it impossible for inquiries such as those of Vitals and Electrogas to happen.

Going over the reasons as to why this would be the impact of the bill, the NGO said that requests for inquiries by private persons will have to be supported by evidence of an identical standard to that obtained after the conclusion of an inquiry and that the claimant must prove someone else's guilt based on a balance of probabilities before their inquiry request can even be considered. "The standard of proof is much higher than the prima facie requirement to indict a person at a much later stage of the proceedings," it said.

It continued that if prosecutions carried out after an inquiry requested by a private citizen fail and do not lead to convictions, then the individual who requested the inquiry will face "draconian penalties worth millions of euros". This threat of penalties makes it possible for a private person to take such a risk, Repubblika said. With that said, Repubblika stated that the new law also reduces the effectiveness of criminal inquiries regardless of whether they follow a request to begin from a private individual, the police, or the Attorney General.

It continued on that point by saying that the magistrates will have stricter deadlines to conclude the inquiries without any evidence of improvements in the efficiency of the operation or in the tools available to them. It added that magistrates will also have reduced access to external experts compared to what they currently have.

Repubblika said that the existing possibility that the Court of Magistrates is asked to investigate suspicion of corruption in the police without resorting to the police itself is being removed, and added that the police will now be controlling what reaches and does not reach the court.

The NGO remarked that the new law also "creates imaginary rights" for suspects in an inquiry which do not exist in the present law "and have no basis in the constitution or in human rights law".

It said that the existing right to request reconsideration by a superior court of a decision rejecting an individual's inquiry request is being removed as well. It also stated that the new law is retroactive and cancels inquiries requested by private individuals on suspicion of corruption where the suspect is a prominent government minister, even if such inquiries have already started under the existing law, "the law is effectively written ad hominem".

Repubblika said that in the context where for many years the only effective available tool to Maltese citizens to ensure the prosecution of grand corruption is their right to petition Magistrates to carry out inquiries, then the removal of that right is a "serious regression in the framework of the country's rule of law". Continuing on that point, the NGO remarked that the gravity of the matter is more understandable when considering that the police "consistently refuse or neglect to investigate serious violations of the law by the highest State officials", which it said happens even when such violations are revealed by institutions of State integrity or exposed and reported by journalists at significant risk to their lives. "That risk resulted in the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, whose murder was motivated by an attempt to cover up the great corruption she was exposing."

Repubblika said that a public inquiry into Daphne Caruana Galizia's murder found the State responsible for her death.