Half of the applicants for the post of a judge on the European Court of Human Rights are women, ending a three-year gender controversy between Malta and the rest of Europe.
Malta has spent the last years trying to persuade the ECHR to choose someone from its three male nominees but recently gave up its fight and issued a fresh call for applications.
In the new call, the Ministry of Justice specified that at least one of the short-listed nominees will have to be a woman.
The closing date for applications was Monday and the ministry has now confirmed it received 14 applications, including seven from women. This is considerably higher than in 2006 when only two women had applied.
A spokesman for the ministry said those who applied this year came from different backgrounds and included Maltese people living and working abroad.
The ministry will now select three people to nominate to the ECHR so that one can ultimately be appointed to replace Judge Giovanni Bonello, who was meant to retire at the age of 70 but stayed on till a replacement is found.
The Maltese government had originally chosen Chief Justice Vincent DeGaetano, Mr Justice Joseph D. Camilleri and Mr Justice Joseph Filletti, the three judges who sit on the Constitutional Court.
It argued that they were the most qualified and experienced but the ECHR refused the nomination and insisted that one of the three had to be a woman, for gender equality's sake.
Justice Minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici recently said he still felt he was right about the initial list of nominees but it was now time to move on. "Let's hope this time we'll be in a position to nominate the best man and woman for the job," he had said.
Asked to comment on the fact that seven women have now applied, a spokesman for the ministry chose not to comment except to point out that five more women applied this time when compared to last time. "Further comment before the evaluation process is concluded would be inappropriate."
The decision to issue a new call specifying that a woman must be chosen did not go down well with all women. Although it was welcomed by women's rights activists as a step forward, some female legal professionals deemed it insulting.