The process to select a new judge to sit on the European Court of Human Rights has started but very little official information has been issued even if the Council of Europe’s Parliament Assembly demands a “fair and transparent” procedure.
The nine-year term of office of the incumbent, Chief Justice Emeritus Vincent De Gaetano, expires on September 19 and the government has been invited to submit a list of three candidates by March 6. It is the Parliamentary Assembly that makes the final choice, which is expected to happen some time in April.
A call for applications from candidates “possessing the necessary qualifications and expertise” was made in The Malta Government Gazette in late November. The deadline was December 21.
The notice, which was also carried in a Sunday newspaper in early December, referred to article 21 of the European Convention of Human Rights, which lays down that the judges “shall be of high moral character and must either possess the qualifications required for appointment to high judicial office or be jurisconsults of recognised competence”.
They must be able to actively engage in either the English or French language and also be able to listen, read and understand the other.
This would be Malta’s fifth judge to sit on the Strasbourg-based Court. Chief Justice Emeritus John Cremona served between 1965 and 1992. He was followed by chief justice emeritus Giuseppe Mifsud Bonnici, human rights lawyer Giovanni Bonello and then by Dr De Gaetano.
To ensure gender balance at the European Court of Human Rights, the Parliamentary Assembly expects that at least one of the three nominees should be from “the under-represented sex”.
They must be able to actively engage in either the English or French language
About a third of the Court judges are women.
This condition had caused problems for the Maltese government in 2009 when its list of was rejected three times because none of the candidates was a woman.
Legal profession sources said interviews with applicants had either just started or were about to. It is not known whether the selection committee will be interviewing all applicants or just the ones it shortlists.
The government has made no official announcement so far about the selection process, apart from the call for applications.
When asked about the matter by Times of Malta, a Justice Ministry spokesman, however, said the process to draw up a shortlist of three candidates was ongoing, adding that, thus, some of the questions made by the Times of Malta could not be “met”.
Among other things, the ministry was asked who appointed the selection committee and who were its members, arguing that since viva voce sessions were to be held the applicants would, in any case, know their identity.
Legal sources said they hoped the government would at least adopt the same kind of transparent process followed by other member states and announce both the composition of the selection committee and the three nominees, and their CVs, once these are decided and the Parliamentary Assembly was informed.
Malta first acknowledged the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights on May 1, 1987, just over three months before the European Human Rights Convention became part of Maltese law.
All people living in Malta had also been granted the right to petition organs of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.
Last year, 30 new cases involving Malta were registered with the European Court of Human Rights. This was the highest since 2015 (24, 25 and 22 respectively).