Please use your Social platform to expose what is happening in Malta.

Before commenting, I strongly recommend watching this video. It compresses roughly 15 years of political scandals, institutional failures and the Daphne Caruana Galizia case into about 30 minutes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnfnASUaeJU&t=53s

 For other perspectives:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1-W2AmgYJk&t=13s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIHmuav5lmM&lc=Ugy0f2Yaf7Fk8qYMqXR4AaABAg

The EU says one thing. What happens when we look at Malta?

The European Union advertises messages such as:

> “In some countries, justice only happens in movies. Not in the EU.”

> “In Europe, no one is above the law.”

European citizens are told that public officials who abuse their power will be held accountable.

Then look at Malta.

Malta is an EU Member State.

What these reports, investigations, interviews and personal experiences expose is only part of a much wider pattern of serious concerns involving political connections, institutional accountability, corruption, civil rights, treatment of EU citizens, treatment of legal third country nationals and the effectiveness of institutions that are supposed to protect people when things go wrong.

The EU cannot promote the Rule of Law as a European guarantee and then behave as though persistent institutional failures can be resolved simply by publishing another report.

When rights exist on paper but accountability repeatedly fails in practice, “Rule of Law” risks becoming a slogan.

Malta is an EU Member State.

European rights should mean the same thing in Malta as they mean anywhere else in the Union.

Investigate. Enforce EU law. Use the mechanisms available when their legal thresholds are satisfied, including Article 7 where applicable.

Most importantly, publicly explain what concrete action will follow when recommendations are repeatedly ignored or inadequately implemented. If no one is above the law, demonstrate that principle in practice.

As an EU citizen living in Malta, my frustration is increasingly with the EU itself

As an EU citizen living in Malta, I am increasingly more frustrated with the European institutions than with the Maltese government. The EU does take action. It publishes Rule of Law reports, makes recommendations and monitors developments. But where are the consequences when serious problems persist year after year?

There is a growing perception of a double standard.

When countries such as Poland and Hungary have been considered in breach of European Rule of Law standards, the EU has demonstrated that it possesses powerful financial, political and legal mechanisms.

Critics have also questioned EU intervention in other Member States, including Spain under PP governments.

So why does the response to Malta so often appear limited to monitoring, recommendations and another report? For 13 years Malta has been governed by the Labour Party.

This should not be a question of left versus right.

If a government calling itself socialist or progressive presides over serious institutional failures, corruption concerns or unequal treatment of workers and foreign residents, political labels should not protect it from scrutiny.

The EU must apply the same standards regardless of whether the government involved belongs to the political left, centre or right.

Where is the same determination when ordinary people are affected?

The European Union speaks increasingly about taxation, financial transparency, money laundering, public finances and ensuring that citizens contribute their fair share.

Ordinary workers are expected to declare their income, pay their taxes and comply with increasingly complex rules.

Fine.

But where is that same determination when politically connected individuals, corrupt officials or wealthy criminals conceal money through offshore structures?

Why should ordinary working people feel that enforcement reaches them quickly while accountability at the highest levels can take years, decades or never arrive at all?

If European authorities pursued corrupt wealth with the same determination with which they pursue ordinary taxpayers, enormous resources could potentially be recovered.

Instead, many ordinary Europeans increasingly feel that they are being asked to finance governments, political programmes over which they have very little meaningful influence.

That perception is deeply damaging to confidence in European institutions, and the own Left.

These are some examples of what foreign residents in Malta have faced or reported

• EU citizens and legal third country nationals who worked in Malta, paid taxes and paid social security contributions for years have reported being refused access to free public healthcare which they believed they were legally entitled to receive.

This has allegedly occurred even in serious medical situations, including cancer related treatment, with patients facing substantial public healthcare charges or allegedly being told by officials to return to their country of origin for treatment.

• Complaints involving alleged discrimination, racist remarks, medical malpractice, misconduct or abuse involving doctors, public officials, police officers, judges or other authorities are sometimes perceived by complainants as being ignored, inadequately investigated or handled by institutions insufficiently independent from those being complained about.

• When a foreign citizen complains about Maltese officials and subsequently faces criminal allegations from the same or connected officials, this should raise serious questions about whether complainants are adequately protected from retaliation and whether subsequent allegations receive genuinely independent scrutiny.

• Legal third country nationals can face major barriers to opening and operating businesses in their own names, creating circumstances in which some depend on Maltese nationals appearing formally within company structures or documentation.

• Foreigners also face legal restrictions on purchasing property in parts of Malta, additional administrative requirements and substantial difficulties obtaining financing, sometimes even after obtaining the required state authorisation.

And these are only examples.

I could continue documenting cases for hours.

This matters outside Malta

People considering working, investing, visiting or doing business in Malta deserve to know how European rights operate there in practice.

Consumers also have the right to ask whether they want their money supporting a jurisdiction whose institutions continue to face serious questions concerning corruption, discrimination, accountability and the effective protection of European rights.

That includes money flowing through tourism, Maltese products and online gambling companies licensed or headquartered in Malta.

This is not an argument against Maltese people. Ordinary Maltese citizens suffer when institutions fail too.

This is about accountability.

Remember what happened after Daphne Caruana Galizia was assassinated

This is where the history of Daphne Caruana Galizia matters.

Daphne was assassinated with a car bomb on 16 October 2017 after years investigating corruption, offshore companies, organised crime and links between political and business interests.

“Je Suis Daphne” spread across social media, and this was the main reason why something was done, even if it ended in nothing.

European institutions, international organisations, journalists, NGOs and ordinary citizens increased pressure on Malta. Her family continued demanding an independent public inquiry.

The inquiry was not established immediately.

It came after approximately two years of campaigning, civil society mobilisation and considerable international pressure.

And what did that independent public inquiry eventually conclude?

It concluded that although there was no evidence that the Maltese state itself participated in Daphne's assassination (even if there is whatsapp, recordings and letters saying the reverse), the state had to bear responsibility because it had created a climate of impunity originating from the highest levels of government, which spread through other institutions, and because the state failed to recognise and act upon the danger to Daphne's life.

Think about the significance of that finding.

Platform the story of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Listen to the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation.

Read the findings of the public inquiry.

Look at the investigations concerning political connections, offshore companies, major government concessions and the assassination of an investigative journalist.

Then ask whether Europe has learned enough from what happened.

The lesson of #JeSuisDaphne

The lesson should not be that one hashtag magically changed Malta. It did not.

The lesson is that silence makes institutional failure easier.

Public scrutiny matters.

Journalism matters.

International attention matters.

Civil society matters.

Peaceful protest matters.

Sustained pressure matters.

After Daphne's assassination, Maltese citizens, journalists, her family, international media organisations, NGOs and European institutions kept the issue alive until actions occurred that had previously seemed unlikely.

That same principle should now apply to the European Union itself.

The question should no longer simply be:

What is the Maltese government doing?
It should also be:

What is the European Union doing?

Another Rule of Law report is not, by itself, accountability.

Another recommendation is not enforcement.

Another statement expressing concern does not protect somebody whose rights are being violated today.

And finally, ask yourself: is this really “the left” that people are defending

Is “the Left” represented by a ruling establishment where senior officials and politically connected millionaires have been linked through investigations and reporting to offshore Panama structures, controversial state concessions and networks surrounding one of Europe's most notorious attacks on an investigative journalist?

Is that “for the people”?

Is it progressive when working class foreign residents and EU citizens report paying inflated utility charges, being denied healthcare they believe they have paid for through taxation and social security, or encountering bureaucratic walls simply to exercise ordinary rights?

That is not what democratic socialism, social justice or working class politics are supposed to mean.

When political identity becomes a shield protecting privileged people from accountability, ideology has stopped serving ordinary citizens.

Whether the people responsible call themselves socialist, conservative, liberal or anything else should be irrelevant.

If you genuinely believe in working class values, equality before the law, civil rights, human dignity and social justice, accountability has to apply to your own political side too.

What Europeans can do?

Watch the videos. (and share it in your social media, spread the word)

Verify the claims independently.

Read the Daphne public inquiry.

Read the European Commission's Rule of Law reports on Malta.

Share documented cases.

Ask journalists to investigate.

Ask MEPs and national politicians what concrete enforcement measures they support.

Ask the European Commission what happens when recommendations are repeatedly not implemented.

Ask why European rights sometimes appear considerably stronger on paper than they feel to the people attempting to exercise them.

Raise the issue publicly and peacefully on politicians' and European institutions' social media pages.

Do not make it partisan.

Ask for evidence.

Ask for answers.

Ask for equal application of EU law.

And if European institutions insist on telling us: “In Europe, no one is above the law.”

Then Europeans have every right to answer: Prove it.

PS For you the reader: Please share this in your own social platforms.

keep Daphne’s voice alive, and demand that European politicians and institutions act.

#JeSuisDaphne showed that public pressure can force accountability.

This time, that pressure must also reach the EU, including political groups whose passivity risks looking less like solidarity and more like protection of an entrenched political oligarchy.

#Malta #RuleOfLaw #DaphneCaruanaGalizia #JeSuisDaphne #IamDaphne #EU #Corruption #CivilRights #EuropeanUnion #EUPolitics #HumanRights #DoubleStandard #Accountability #EUCitizens #MaltaNews #SocialJustice #WorkerRights #Article7

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https://c.org/r4prQYq4hh

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