A five-member delegation from the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties Committee is expected to arrive today “to assess the rule of law, corruption and the safety of journalists”. They are, of course, welcome but law-abiding people in this country are justified in being sceptical about yet another visit that is likely to be followed by mere talk and paperwork but very little significant action on the ground, if any.

Delegation head Sophia in ‘t Veld, chairwoman of the European Parliament’s monitoring group on the rule of law, is scheduled to give a press conference at the end of the visit tomorrow. She should inform law-abiding Maltese people on her arrival what exactly her mission would like to achieve and which colleagues before her did not succeed in doing.

There are some points the five visiting MEPs need to bear in mind.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was brutally killed in a car bomb blast last October because of what she wrote and said in her capacity as a blogger/journalist. The MEPs need meet nobody to establish that three men were accused of her murder but the mastermind remain/s on the run.

Do the delegation members honestly think any of those they will meet will admit they are government stooges or are unwilling/unable to stand up to be counted?

Will the MEPs be in a position to draw a clear conclusion at the end of their visit on the basis of what President Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca said last December that “the rule of law is as strong as the people acknowledge it to be, how much they believe in it, cherish it and continue to support it”?

Will they better understand what historian Raymond Mangion meant when, on Victory Day, he declared that “we must leave the rule of law to prevail over a system based on party politics on the strength of a propitious constitutional infrastructure according to national consensus”?

Are they aware of what Chief Justice Emeritus Silvio Camilleri had said on the opening of the Forensic Year, barely a fortnight before Ms Caruana Galizia’s murder but when the Panama Papers and leaked reports of the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit were already out? “The rule of law demands there should be punishment for whoever contravenes the law. If there is punishment for some but not for others the courts remain no longer administrators of justice but are transformed into administrators of injustice since they end up penalising some but not others. Instead of rule of law we will have the rule of delinquents,” he warned, prophetically.

Just days ago, European Commissioner president Jean-Claude Juncker said he was “very concerned by the developments in some of our member states. Article 7 must be applied whenever the rule of law is threatened.”

Article 7 allows the European Council to give a formal warning to a country accused of violating fundamental rights and, then, to impose sanctions and suspend voting rights.

The Maltese people want nothing of that. They do not regret the decision they made 14 years ago for Malta to join the EU. But they do insist the values they wanted to protect through membership are effectively protected and upheld.

Malta must not be punished. Instead, erring, greedy and arrogant politicians and people in positions of power should. They must be named and shamed.

This is a Times of Malta print editorial

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