Nationalist Party spokesperson Peter Agius intends to run for an MEP seat in the 2024 European Parliament elections.

Agius, who previously led the European Parliament office in Malta and served as speechwriter to EP president Antonio Tajani, said on Saturday that he had written to the PN seeking to be approved as one of its candidates for the 2024 race.

“Almost 20 years passed since Malta’s decision to join the EU. Since then, the EU has changed a lot, and not always with due consideration to Maltese needs. Tax harmonisation and ‘one size fits all’ policies are but a few of the daily challenges which require a stronger representation of Maltese interests in Brussels,” he said.

He said Malta needed MEPs who could represent it with “conviction and competence” and urged anyone keen on lending a hand to get in touch.

Agius was also a PN candidate during the 2019 MEP elections. He failed to get elected in that campaign as the PN lost its third MEP seat to Labour, but he then remained active in domestic politics, speaking at several party events, serving as its representative within the European People’s Party and then being appointed its official spokesperson last year.  

He will be hoping to improve on the 10,000 first preference votes he obtained during his maiden campaign in 2019.

Agius is the first PN candidate to officially declare his intention to contest the 2024 elections and one of the first to do so across the political spectrum, following ADPD's Sandra Gauci.

PN MEP incumbents Roberta Metsola, who is currently serving a two-a-half-year term as EP president, and David Casa are both expected to run.