The pressure is mounting

If anyone thinks that the visit of the EU’s Justice Commissioner this week was a social call, or just another case of meddling foreigners interfering in the good running of the country, is sadly mistaken.

If anyone thinks that what the Commissioner said during that two-day visit was a mere flash in the pan that will not amount to much, they are also sadly mistaken.

If anyone missed it, what came to pass last Thursday was a stern rebuke of Malta’s track record on corruption, money laundering and security, as well as the highly controversial citizenship sales, with the Commissioner having observed that: ‘Money laundering, citizenship for sale, security, corruption all pose a threat to security, the rule of law and democracy.’

Such words from a European Commissioner do not come lightly, and as such, they should not be taken lightly.

The wheels of the European Union are slow moving indeed, but moving they are. The European Parliament, with its PANA Committee and Rule of Law delegations to Malta, was the first on Malta’s case and they have come down hard on the Maltese government and institutions.

Now the European Commission has entered the fray and brought these issues to a whole new level, and, beyond the diplomacy and platitudes, it is more than evident that Europe is seriously concerned about the state of affairs in Malta.

There were the positives. The Commissioner welcomed Malta’s long-overdue signing on to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office and the country’s economic growth. These are the niceties.

But the spin by the Labour Party was that the Commissioner welcomed the country’s economic success, which was a single sentence out of a near1,000 word list of talking points, which is why in today’s issue we carry the official version of her speaking points – just so that all is clear to everyone.

The rest was a damning indictment after indictment on the current state of play in Malta.

She expressed concern that Malta has not yet fully implemented the EU’s 4th Anti-Money Laundering Directive, although the government had declared last December that it had fully transposed the EU legislation into national legislation. Apparently, in the Commissioner’s eyes, it has not.

She raised the spectre of Pilatus Bank, expressing serious concern that the sordid case is a prime example of the challenges Malta faces in applying anti-money laundering laws.

It was, after all, this Commissioner who had urged the European Banking Authority to investigate possible breaches by the Financial Intelligence Unit when it investigated the bank under one head, who found breaches and who later resigned, only for his successor to suddenly give the bank a clean bill of health shortly afterward.

Along these lines, she subtly ‘ encouraged’ the Maltese authorities to cooperate with the European Banking Authority and to follow their recommendations.

There were also concerns raised about the Individual Investor Programme. This time those concerns were not raised by the European Parliament, but by the Commission, which had actually approved the IIP under certain conditions.

She recalled that back in 2014, the Commission had required Malta to only award citizenship to those with a genuine link to the country and who actually reside in the country for at least one year. The Commissioner warned that she wants to be ‘reassured that this link is effectively respected’.

The hammer, the Commissioner suggested, may fall at the year’s end when her ‘teams’ publish a report they are working on looking into national schemes granting EU citizenship to investors, based on an in-depth fact-finding study, which will look, in detail, at the legislation and practice in all member states concerned, Malta obviously included.

Both the EP and the Justice Commissioner have made it crystal clear that their interest in the suspicious activities being engaged in by the government and some of its members is not just a matter of keeping tabs on the behaviour of member states. It is an issue of pan-European concern.

They have both made it amply clear that what happens in one member state happens in all member states.

As the Commissioner rightly observed: “The fight against money laundering is not just about protecting our financial systems; the gaps in one member state have an impact on all others. The money laundered in one country can, and often does, support crime in another country.”

The same, she observed, goes for people being granted Maltese, and hence EU, citizenship.

Malta is, in so many ways, being perceived as the weak link in the EU chain, as a window through which all sorts of criminality can climb into the bloc.

Malta and the Maltese deserve a better reputation than that which the current government is bestowing on us. And, if the electorate will not do what is necessary to get our act cleaned up, perhaps Brussels will.