Updated 4.35 pm with PN statement below.
A new rule that gives the home affairs minister the power not to publish names of wealthy passport buyers for “security reasons” is to be removed following heavy criticism.
The government u-turn comes just a day after the controversial legal notice giving Byron Camilleri "absolute discretion" on naming passport buyers was outed.
Parliamentary secretary Alex Muscat said the clause had been designed for "very extraordinary circumstances" but would be removed as "another sign of transparency".
The original version of the legal amendment gave the home affairs minister powers over whether to publish the names of successful applicants or those whose passport had been revoked.
Critics said the amendment went against Maltese citizenship rules that make it mandatory that all names of people granted citizenship are published in the government gazette every year.
In a statement on Wednesday, Muscat, who is parliamentary secretary for citizenship, said the government was removing the secrecy clause after listening to concerns.
"In view of the fact that this clause can be interpreted as casting some doubt on the great work done to enhance transparency, the government has listened and is taking note of the concerns raised and will be remove it from the legal notice," he said.
He argued that the secrecy clause was intended to be used only in extraordinary circumstances.
"All the changes that have been made have been prepared in a positive spirit of good governance and the strengthening of a program that has greatly benefited the Maltese people."
He said Malta was the only country that publishes the names of those who have obtained citizenship but that the new legal notice means it will also publish names of those whose citizenship has been revoked.
Both Malta and Cyprus have recently come under scrutiny from the European commission, which has formally commenced infringement proceedings on the golden passport schemes run by the two island nations.
The government has argued against the EU’s claimed right to decide whether Malta should sell passports, stating that it is a matter that falls entirely within the nation’s sovereignty.
The EU commission has repeatedly attacked golden passport style schemes, insisting that the Maltese passport is a gateway to the EU as a whole, not just the sovereign state’s borders.
Malta has responded to a letter from the EU commission, which marked the first step in infringement proceedings.
“We can confirm that a letter has been received but we have nothing more to say at this stage,” a commission spokesperson said.
PN: Names will be hidden in long list, published a year late
In a reaction, the Nationalist Party said the legal notice will be amended by the government only because it had been found out.
The shadow minister for good governance, Karol Aquilina, said the names of the new Malta passport holders would still remain hidden, in that they would be carried within a long list of names of people who acquired Maltese citizenship by other means, such as naturalisation and marriage.
And the list would be published more than a year after citizenship would have been acquired.
For example, the names of those who acquired Maltese citizenship in 2019 still has to be published.
Had the government really wanted transparency, it would have accepted a PN suggestion to publish the list of those who acquired citizenship every three months, as used to be done until 2013.
Furthermore, in the case of the sale of passports, the PN had proposed that in order to improve due diligence, names should be published as soon as an application for a Maltese passport was made and not when citizenship was granted, Aquilina said.