The Daphne Caruana Galizia murder investigation will be debated within the European Parliament this week, despite a Labour MEP’s vow to stop the discussion “over our dead bodies”.

According to the official final draft agenda for Thursday, the discussion will take place at 2.30pm with a vote in April.

MEP David Casa said that the European Parliament had decided to proceed with Thursday’s debate, “despite minor objections from a select few”.

Objections to the debate come from the Socialist and Democrats MEP grouping which the Labour Party forms a part of.

But a majority of other political groupings – from the European People’s Party to the Greens and GUE/NGL, among others – are keen to debate the matter. 

Labour MEP Alex Agius Saliba led the charge last week to stop any such debate from happening.

“We tell them ‘over our dead bodies’,” Agius Saliba said, according to Malta Today.

Agius Saliba and fellow Labour MEP Cyrus Engerer have argued that a parliamentary debate could prejudice ongoing court proceedings concerning Caruana Galizia's murder and said the debate is being requested for partisan purposes. 

Times of Malta reported on Monday that MEPs were to debate the matter. Agius Saliba had described that as “fake news”. S&D president Iratxe Garcia Perez had also dismissed the report as "EPP attempts to spread fake news". 

The revised draft agenda for Thursday's European Parliament session, approved by the conference of presidents.

Speaking one day later on Tuesday, Agius Saliba acknowledged that a majority of political groups want a debate to go ahead.

MEPs are expected to discuss the political implications of shocking revelations from court cases concerning Caruana Galizia’s 2017 murder, with one of her self-confessed killers having implicated top-level politicians in crimes.

Hitman Vince Muscat has testified that former Economy Minister Chris Cardona was involved in another “big job” in the years preceding her murder and linked Cardona’s associate David Gatt to a separate plot to kill Caruana Galizia in 2015.

He has also said that a sitting minister was involved in a separate crime and testified that he had been told that one of the men he says supplied the bomb used to kill Caruana Galizia, Robert Agius known as Ta’ Maksar, “had the power to bring down the government” if he was implicated in the murder.

MEP Casa said the debate was an important one.

"Malta needs protection from its government - not the other way round. We will not stand idly by whilst others try to sweep the truth under the carpet," he said.