Cyrus Engerer to run for next year’s European Parliament elections on PL ticket

Cyrus Engerer has announced his intention to run for next year’s European Parliament elections with the Labour Party.

In a Facebook post, Engerer said he was welcoming Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s call for him to run for the MEP elections, having been “honoured” in the last week by the encouragement he received from various people to contest.

In May, Engerer had stepped down from his role as the Prime Minister’s EU representative, a position to which he had been appointed in 2015.

Engerer, who was in the past a member of the Nationalist Party, and who has served as PN’s Sliema Deputy Mayor, later defected to the Labour Party shortly before the 2013 general election.

He had subsequently stood for the 2014 European Parliament elections with Labour, only to withdraw his candidacy when a court of appeal sentenced him to two years in prison, suspended for two years, after he was found guilty of distributing pornography.

In his Facebook post, Engerer criticised the “behaviour” of Nationalist Party MEPs Roberta Metsola and David Casa, who, he said, had in the past five years gone “against what the Maltese believe in”.

“Malta’s six MEPs should always put Malta’s interests first,” he said, “We might not agree, and may argue amongst ourselves, but we should have one voice when we are representing the white and red flag which unites us.”

He said he had spent the last few years in Brussels attending European Parliament sessions and listening to the “attacks against Malta”, without being able to speak his mind on the matter.

“I am determined to bring forward the voice of the Maltese,” he emphasised, adding that while he would for the time being remain the Prime Minister’s consultant on EU policy, he would be doing all he could to ensure Labour had their ninth strong win in the European elections next year.