Setting a timeline to implement the Venice Commission proposals on the rule of law would not be possible until the government discussed the matter with the Opposition, Justice Minister Owen Bonnici said.

Dr Bonnici reaffirmed that the government planned to implement “the bulk of the proposals” made by the Council of Europe body.

However, when asked for a timeline on when the proposals would be taken up, a coy Dr Bonnici insisted that a number of the changes being recommended required approval by a two-thirds majority in Parliament, which meant the government and Opposition had to be in agreement.

“Unfortunately, during the last legislature the two sides could not agree on a number of the proposals. This time round, there seems to be a greater appetite from both sides to work on the reforms,” he told Times of Malta.

Government would be refining the proposals

The minister dismissed criticism that some of the body’s proposals had already been made by the Bonello Commission, set up by Dr Bonnici himself in 2013 to advise on judicial system reform but which the government subsequently shelved.

He noted that the government had already implemented “many” of that commission’s recommendations. “There were [recommendations] which we implemented but not in the exact same way as proposed because we wanted to refine them. Then there were others we implemented as proposed,” the minister noted.

Asked whether the government would be “refining” the Venice Commission proposals in the same way, Dr Bonnici said these were written in a more “general” way.

“With regard to the details, we need to sit down and refine them. The Bonello Commission was more voluminous because it had more time and so the report was more detailed. The approach by the Venice Commission was slightly different,” he said.

In its 29-page report released on Monday, the Venice Commission, made up of world-respected constitutional experts, recommended that the Constitution should be updated to improve practices of checks and balances. It called for the position of the President to be bolstered and for Parliament rules on conflicts of incompatibility to be tightened.

The Bonello Commission had made 450 recommendations, among them removing political appointees on the Commission for the Administration of Justice and ending political influence in judicial appointments.