Malta fails to fill European judge vacancy again after lawyer withdraws nomination

Malta is still without a judge on the General Court of the European Union after government’s second choice for the post, lawyer Veronique Dalli, withdrew her nomination.

Dalli was Malta’s second nominee for the role after Labour MP Edward Zammit Lewis was rejected last year by the European court selection committee, known as Comité 255.

Apart from practicing as a lawyer, Dalli is Energy Minister Miriam Dalli’s sister and the Labour Party’s nominee on the Electoral Commission in Malta.

Dalli had an interview with the panel of experts at Comité 255 last week in Luxembourg. This is the final stage before the committee expresses an opinion on the suitability of the candidates before it.

Dalli told MaltaToday she withdrew her nomination after the interview because she felt it was conducted in a “pre-determined way”. She did not elaborate.

“On my personal initiative, I wrote to the panel to inform them of my decision to withdraw my nomination,” she added.

The latest development has left the government in an embarrassing situation and a vacancy yet to fill.

The post became available after Judge Ramona Frendo was accepted to serve on the European Court of Justice. Frendo had been a judge at the European General Court since 2019.

The Maltese government had issued an open call for the vacancy in April last year and five people threw their hat in the ring.

Apart from Zammit Lewis and Dalli, the others who showed an interest were: David Ciliberti, a legal and policy officer at the European Commission’s directorate general for justice, who now forms part of European Commissioner Glenn Micallef’s cabinet; Rashida Sheikh, a lawyer-linguist with the Maltese language unit at the European Court of Justice; and Jacques René Zammit, a lawyer specialised in EU law, who has been working for almost two decades at the ECJ and is currently the court’s press attaché with the English desk.

It is unclear who the government will nominate next.

“The government has been informed that Dr Dalli has decided to withdraw her nomination. In these circumstances, the ministry is not in a position to comment since any comments would be superfluous as these proceedings are now exhausted,” a ministry spokesperson told MaltaToday.

Meanwhile, in a statement on Tuesday afternoon, Nationalist Party justice spokesperson Karol Aquilina called on the government to stop “pushing forward partisan loyalists”.

Instead, Aquilina added, the government should reform the judicial nomination process.

“It is imperative that Malta’s nominees to high-level EU posts are selected on the basis of merit and competence, not partisan political convenience, which has so far only served to undermine Malta’s reputation across Europe,” Aquilina said.

He lambasted the prime minister and the justice minister for Malta’s failure to fill the vacancy at the European court.

“Both Robert Abela and Jonathan Attard continue to show they have failed to grasp the seriousness of the scrutiny involved in the appointment of judges to the General Court of the European Union,” Aquilina said.