Roberta Metsola will head new European Parliament anti-corruption body

Nationalist Party MEP Roberta Metsola has been named as the chair of a new European Parliament intergroup tasked with preventing criminality and corruption at the highest level of EU member states.

Metsola, head of the PN delegation in the European Parliament, will chair the group together with German Green MEP Daniel Freund.

In a statement on Thursday, Metsola called for conrete action in the battle against corruption. "The political and constitutional crisis in Malta must by a catalyst for change also on a European level. We need to have mechanisms in place to ensure that we have the tools to prevent criminality and corruption at the highest level of EU member states.

"In crisis situations like Malta, people look to the European Union for legal and moral leadership. We cannot have more platitudes, we need concrete action and for that to happen, the EU needs to develop instruments to protect people from corruption. Corruption kills. Daphne Caruana Galizia was assassinated because she exposed corruption at the highest levels of government," Metsola said.

Metsola was also part of an MEP delegation of the LIBE committee that came to Malta on a fact-finding mission in the midst of the current political crisis. After two days of meetings with the Police Commissioner, the Prime Minister, NGOs and journalists, the delegation concluded that Prime Minister Joseph Muscat's decision to stay in office was very concerning due to fears of tampering with the ongoing murder investigation.

"On a personal level, coming from Malta, I am determined to use this platform to show that the disgraced Keith Schembri, Joseph Muscat and Konrad Mizzi do not define the Maltese population," Metsola said.

Her colleague, PN MEP David Casa, had also been elected as quaestor, responsible for different aspects of the European Parliament's administration.