PN candidate ‘appalled’ over exclusion of candidates from EP debates in Malta

One of the Nationalist Party’s candidates has called for wider debates to be organized by the European Parliament office in Malta for all candidates for the 2019 elections.

Peter Agius, a former head of the EP office in Malta and more recently a spokesperson for EP president Antonio Tajani, said recent debates had featured incumbents but not enough from the wide list of candidates for this year’s elections.

Agius said he was “appalled” to see European election candidates being systematically excluded from the institutional campaign led by the European Parliament Office in Malta.

“The public has a right to know its choices coming up to the European election. For this reason, the European Parliament Office has in the past both in 2009 and in 2014 involved all candidates in its debates as from September the year before,” Agius, who headed the office up to his recent appointment as Tajani’s spokesperson, said.

“This is not the case this time. New candidates are being systematically excluded from events and plans of the EP office. In my personal opinion, this goes against the very same ethos of European democracy, as expressed by MEPs themselves as recently as last week where, in a debate with Commissioner Gabriel in the European Parliament, MEPs insisted on the need for a wide debate including all the diversity of opinions with a view to the very important decision to be taken on 25 May… Europe should be about open dialogue and diversity of opinion.”