Looking forward 2024: A new European Commissioner and a Cabinet shake up

In 2024, Malta will be sending a new European Commissioner to Brussels as Helena Dalli’s term will expire in June. 

The President of the Commission is expected to be chosen after the European Parliament elections, slated for 8 June. Subsequently, each country will be expected to nominate a commissioner, who is then assigned a portfolio for which they will be accountable during the five-year term. Despite each member state appointing a member to the Brussels executive, commissioners operate independently of national governments. 

This means that in 2024, Robert Abela will have to nominate someone, who will then be grilled by MEPs before being confirmed. 

In Maltese tradition, Abela is most likely to choose a candidate from his own Cabinet and fingers have long been pointed towards Deputy Prime Minister Chris Fearne.  

Since 2020, after Fearne lost the leadership race to Abela, many inside the party have speculated that the deputy PM would be Abela’s choice. Fearne, who has also doubled up as health minister, shone during the COVID-19 pandemic having led Malta’s efforts to contain the spread of the virus without resorting to a full lockdown. 

Fearne’s work during the pandemic earned him brownie points among peers in the World Health Organisation and last May he was appointed president of the WHO Assembly. That post carries a one-year term and culminates in the annual assembly where WHO delegates discuss the priorities and policies the organisation will be working on for the following 12 months. 

To put it simply, Fearne is most likely to be Abela’s nomination for Malta’s next EU Commissioner. This however brings about the eventuality of a ministerial reshuffle, which would mark the first shake up in Robert Abela’s cabinet since the 2022 election. 

Firstly, Abela would need to find a replacement to head the gargantuan Health Ministry. There are two likely candidates up for the job - Active Ageing Minister Jo Etienne Abela, a surgeon by profession, and backbencher Malcolm Paul Agius Galea, a general practitioner. They are both fresh faces, having been elected for the first time in 2022, although Agius Galea is disadvantaged because he has no Cabinet experience. 

The Prime Minister may even opt to merge the health and elderly ministries, keeping Jo Etienne Abela as minister and appointing Agius Galea parliamentary secretary within the fused ministry. 

Other than that, all other Cabinet members will likely to be on their toes when the time for a reshuffle comes in the middle of 2024. Indeed, the outcome of the European Parliament and local council elections may define how deep and wide a reshuffle could be. 

The Prime Minister may opt for a surgical replacement of Fearne without destabilising the ship of State, or go for a radical overhaul in his Cabinet that seeks to respond to public discontent with his government. 

Whichever choice he makes, Abela knows this is the best time to repurpose his Cabinet in time for the second part of the legislature.