Updated 8.50am
While in Malta to meet with journalists, the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation and the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), US Assistant Secretary of State Todd Robinson spoke to James Cummings about the rule of law in Malta.
Authorities in Malta are hesitant to improve transparency, according to the US Assistant Secretary of State of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.
“There’s a hesitancy to develop transparent relationships with journalists,” Todd Robinson told Times of Malta.
“I think it [a willingness] is growing but it’s something that they have to work on. The elephant in the room was the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia... I think in Malta there’s a tension between the state and the journalists,” he said, but added it was something he believed both sides needed to work on.
When asked to elaborate on the latter point, Robinson said it was necessary for “journalists to understand that maybe they don’t have the whole story and may not get the whole story, for varying reasons.”
Using himself as an example, Robinson said: “I’m a government official; there are things I can say and there are things I can’t say. As a journalist, you [would] want me to say everything... but that’s not going to happen.”
Asked for the US assessment of the rule of law in Malta, Robinson said that while he wasn’t best placed to make such an assessment, Maltese authorities were “very familiar” with transparency and good governance and he believed them to be supportive of those ideas.
However, he characterised the country’s political culture as one that looks upwards rather than cross-department.
“I think where culture kicks in is the stovepiping [communicating information to a higher level through narrow channels] of information... everybody’s looking up, but not how they can work together to enhance their ability to do investigations and have successful prosecutions.”
Robinson was more candid about the authorities’ failure to modernise rapidly enough, however.
“They’re still doing so much with paper, rather than focusing on digitalisation and case management that doesn’t involve stacks of files where it’s hard to pull the information out that you need.
“Look, we’re talking about a country that is an EU member in 2023. We’re not talking about a developing country here,” he said. “I think they have a sense that they need to do more, faster, to modernise... which will allow them to do their jobs better and offer more efficient justice to ordinary citizens.”
Despite the promise of changes to transparency and media freedoms in Malta, the government has come under fire this year for what critics say is a lack of change to the system.
In August, a group of international media NGOs expressed concern over the lack of transparency and public consultation in the implementation of reforms stemming from the public inquiry into Caruana Galizia’s assassination.
Meanwhile, in March, European Commissioner for Values and Transparency Věra Jourová said although Malta had increased the allocation of resources to investigative and prosecution bodies, the investigation into high-level corruption cases remain lengthy.
When asked what punitive measures the US would consider if changes continued to be absent, Robinson highlighted the sanctions used against former Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi and former chief of staff Keith Schembri.
“We do have a stick, but... from my conversations today, I think all the organisations I spoke to and that we engage with regularly recognise there are challenges to the system. The fact that [court] cases take a long time came up,” he said.
“They recognise that, but traditions die hard. That said, the officials I spoke to all recognise they’ve got to move faster and need more tools – equipment or legislation – that will allow them to do a better job.
“They all recognise that and want to do it. That’s their plan. They also recognise that it’s not going to happen overnight.”
What gives the US the right to lecture other countries on press freedom?
Despite the US’ promotion of press freedoms around the globe, according to a recent study from the Pew Research Centre in Washington DC, the majority of the country’s journalists are worried about the future of press freedoms in the country.
The study found that roughly six out of 10 journalists based in the country were “extremely or very concerned about potential restrictions on press freedoms... including a third of journalists who say they are extremely concerned”.
Faced with such concerns at home, what does Robinson think gives the US the right to lecture other countries on press freedoms?
“I can understand people asking that question but what I would say is that the United States has always worn its challenges and frailties on its sleeve, and we've never hidden from them.... We're learning from these things too; just because we have these challenges it doesn't mean that others can't benefit from what we go through.
“And we rely on Malta, increasingly, as a leader in the region – with the work we do together in North Africa, for instance, or also when Malta took over as the president of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe [OSCE].
“This is a partnership, a collaboration. And if we think we have we can be helpful in that collaboration in supporting a close partner and ally, then we're going to do it.”