Labour MEP Alfred Sant has declared himself “unimpressed” by what he described as a “highly politicised” report to the legal affairs committee of the Council of Europe by rapporteur Pieter Omtzigt last week.

He also expressed his doubts about linking European funds to a new rule of law mechanism - a process which saw the EU Budget blocked for some weeks after objections by Poland and Hungary. 

Sant told a press conference that parliamentary assemblies in Europe which took Malta to task over its rule of law shortcomings were “highly politicised” and the quality of the contributions on rule of law issues depended on who was talking, the individual’s ideologies and the country he or she was coming from. 

The legal affairs committee last week endorsed the report criticising Malta’s implementation of recommendations it had made to ensure justice for Daphne Caruana Galizia and bolster the rule of law.  

In a resolution adopted 18 months ago, the Council’s assembly had made a series of recommendations to the Maltese authorities on achieving justice for the slain journalist and ending impunity for high-level corruption.

But the committee said implementation of the recommendations on ensuring justice for Caruana Galizia remain “fundamentally unsatisfactory, with no final results”.

The response on ending impunity for high-level corruption was “entirely unsatisfactory”, while the response on strengthening the rule of law in Malta was “unsatisfactory overall, with mixed results”.

But Sant was not impressed with the resolution and by Omtzigt, who he said had a reputation limited solely to the Netherlands and had “no moral authority” to chastise countries like Malta. 

“I certainly have no faith in such resolutions. I believe that a number of recommendations made for Malta to improve its rule of law were good but I do not like the impression that we change things because they are imposed on us. Unless there is a truly independent juridical system, we cannot trust such declarations,” he said during a press conference on the work before the European Parliament plenary this week.

He said Omtzigt’s resolution tried to condemn the Maltese government for hastening the implementation of the recommendations. “End of story,” he said. 

On the linking of EU funds to a rule of law mechanism, Sant said he was concerned that this would lead to the introduction of other things such as taxation, which until now was a national issue. He said the fact that the EU budget was linked with COVID-19 recovery funds could also have its fair share of problems. 

“There’s a lot of pressure because many countries need those funds so the EU budget is kind of being rushed through too. There’s a lot of corner-cutting which I’m concerned about. Only time will tell,” he said. 

The financial package includes the EU's seven-year budget, worth just under €1.1 trillion, also known as the Multi-annual Financial Framework (MFF), and the €750 billion COVID-19 recovery fund, known as Next Generation EU.

On Brexit, Sant said this does not feature on the agenda because talks were still ongoing. He could not exclude that the European Parliament will meet again before the end of the year. 

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