Event organisers will be fined €3,000 if they breach new regulations

Event organisers will be fined €3,000 for every instance they break the regulations pertaining to parties and mass events.

The fine is enforceable through a legal notice published on Wednesday which details the new regulations as announced by Health Minister Chris Fearne a week ago.

The legal notice is titled Organised Public Mass Events Regulations, 2020 and fits under the umbrella of the Public Health Act.

It lists the measures which any organised public mass event must adhere to, and states that the “maximum capacity of attendees shall not exceed one (1) person per four (4) square metres of the space where any given public mass event is to be organised”, and that “attendees may gather in groups not exceeding ten (10) persons, with a two (2) metres distance to be retained between one group of ten (10) persons and another.”

Furthermore, the legal notice states that “provided that for any organised public mass event exceeding the capacity of one hundred (100) attendees, a prescribed risk assessment form shall be submitted by the event organiser with the Malta Tourism Authority and such event shall only be organised following the approval of the risk assessment form by the Malta Tourism Authority.”

“Any event organiser who fails to abide by the provisions of these regulations shall be guilty of an offence and shall, on conviction, be liable to the payment of a penalty of three thousand euro (€3,000) for each and every instance in which these regulations are breached,” the legal notice states.

The legal notice is a reflection of measures announced last week by Fearne and come as Malta goes through a renewed cycle of COVID-19 cases.