Updated | ‘Simon Busuttil not fit for purpose to serve on EU panel that appoints judges’, Miriam Dalli says

Labour MEP Miriam Dalli has asked the European Parliament president to remove Simon Busuttil from a panel overseeing the appointment of judges to the European Court of Justice.

Dalli said that following the Egrant inquiry findings that showed how the allegations against Joseph Muscat were “a mere fabrication”, Antonio Tajani should seriously reconsider Busuttil’s role.

The former PN leader was nominated by Tajani to serve as the European Parliament’s representative on a panel overseeing the appointment of judges and advocates general in the ECJ.

“As far as I am concerned, Simon Busuttil is not fit for purpose,” Dalli said.

The Labour MEP, who sits on the EP’s civil liberties committee said that she has emailed all MEPs on the committee to inform them of the Egrant inquiry findings. Dalli made it a point to mention that she also communicated with those MEPs who “are particularly interested in matters of rule of law and Malta”.

Nationalist Party MEP Roberta Metsola is a member of the civil liberties committee, as is the socialist MEP Ana Gomes, who led a rule of law delegation to Malta in November last year.

MEPs apprised on magistrate's conclusions

Meanhwile, Labour’s head of delegation at the European Parliament Alfred Sant, said that all MEPs at the EU Parliament had been updated with the conclusions of the magisterial inquiry 

The inquiry, Sant pointed out, “convincingly proved that the allegations were unfounded and completely false”.

“Originally made fifteen months ago by deceased journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, the allegations had been consistently repeated in the EU Parliament by some MEPs as if they were the gospel truth despite the fact that the Maltese Prime Minister and his wife steadfastly denied the allegations,” Sant said.

There now remains no doubt whatsoever, Sant said, that the wife of Malta’s Prime Minister ever owned some secret Panama based company, Egrant or any other.