Education Minister Dolores Cristina this afternoon survived a parliamentary vote of no confidence, finding the support of all government MPs while all the Opposition MPs voted against.

The motion was moved by shadow education minister Evarist Bartolo who said the Opposition had waited a month before moving this no-confidence motion in the hope that the governemnt could give an adequate explanation of the circumstances which led the EU to suspend the funds allocated to Malta for education programmes.

The people, he said, had also expected the Minister of Education to apologise for what had taken place.

He said the root cause of that had taken place was the minister's style of management. The minister always insisting that everything had to be controlled by select members of her secretariat.

Therefore how could one believe that the minister had not known what was going on?

Rather than trying to downplay what had taken place, the government needed to learn its lessons and also apply them in other sectors, such as agriculture, Mr Bartolo said.

He added that he stood by his comments that Mrs Cristina was the worst education minister of the past few years.

She had been warned about what was taking place with regard to the education programmes but she had not taken heed until the EU actually suspended the funds.

Warnings on the need to strengthen the national authority on the Youth in Action programme were first made in March last year and they were ignored - and it was precisely because of this weakness that the funds were suspended. People who had come in contact with the Authority had complained directly to the European Commission about the way they were treated.

This issue, Mr Bartolo said, was as much an administrative failure as it was a political one and the minister, who insisted that 'her' people should control everything, should now assume her responsibilities.

Among those who took part in the debate was Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, who said that drastic decisions may be announced in the coming weeks to strengthen national authorities which handled EU funds.

Mrs Cristina defended her actions. She insisted that she had not known, before May, about problems in the national authority which managed the EU programmes. She also observed that no one was claiming there was fraud in the management of the EU funds.

Mr Cristina said her ministry was taking a series of actions for the EU to lift its suspension as quickly as possible.