MEPs overwhelmingly approve Louis Galea's nomination to European Court of Auditors

The European Parliament yesterday overwhelmingly approved Malta's nomination to appoint Speaker Louis Galea as its member on the Court of Auditors for the coming six years.

In a vote taken at the plenary session in Brussels, Dr Galea's nomination was approved by 553 in favour, 17 against and 52 abstentions.

Together with Dr Galea, MEPs also approved all the other nominees, a total of eight, who will assume their new role in Luxembourg at the beginning of May.

The Hungarian Socialist nominee, Szabolcs Fazakas, was the only one to get a rough ride in yesterday's vote as he was not endorsed by the largest group in the Chamber, the European People's Party (EPP).

Before the vote, the EPP said it will not support Mr Fazakas' nomination as it resulted that he formed part of the Hungarian secret police during the country's Communist dictatorship. According to the EPP, Mr Fazakas voluntarily joined the Hungarian Secret Service and worked for more than 13 years as a secret agent.

"It is against basic European democratic values to have him appointed to any high-level EU position. Moreover, Mr Fazakas tried to mislead MEPs in the Budgetary Control Committee by withholding and denying this information," the EPP said. However, although 213 MEPs voted against his nomination, Mr Fazaks still managed to get a majority of votes.

Dr Galea is expected to resign the post of Speaker of the House of Representatives, which he has occupied for the past two years. As member of the European Court of Auditors, Dr Galea will be replacing former Economic Affairs Minister Josef Bonnici who was the first Maltese to be appointed as member of the ECA soon after Malta joined the EU in 2004.

Both the Nationalist Party and the Labour Party congratulated Dr Galea on his appointment.