Categories
Politics

The Passport Judgment Aftermath (III)

Facts and Explainers – The Mexit Fantasy

Another reaction popular on social media is the one that advocates showing the middle finger to the meddling EU and actually leaving it. How dare the Europeans dictate citizenship terms to our sovereign nation?

Where to start? A list maybe…

1. The success of the citizenship by investment scheme that generated 1.4 billion euros for Malta depended heavily on the fact that a) Malta was part of the European Union and b) the scheme practically sold (a more coveted) EU citizenship over and above (the Trojan horse) Maltese citizenship. As the Court itself noted in the judgment, agents were actively promoting the scheme as an opportunity to buy your way into the EU and not Malta. Add that to the scarce checks on the creation of any lien to Malta itself other than coughing up the cash and you may begin to understand how an EU-less Malta would not have such a successful scheme. In other words… it worked because of the EU element not in spite of it. Leave the EU and see how many citizens will comply.

2. Ironically, Malta was involved in another landmark case that has much wider implications than just in Malta. In Repubblika, the Court looked into the exercise of another sovereign competence of member states i.e. judicial reform. Repubblika was not the first case in which the Court did so. Article 19 TUE, and more specifically the obligation on Member States to maintain an efficient judicial system guaranteeing access to the EU acquis had allowed the Court to set an EU standard for judicial reforms. Again in layman´s terms: you fiddle around with your judiciary as much as you like BUT the EU will lways make sure that your new set up is not worse than the certified set-up of that was in place when you joined (non-regression principle). Same thing happened this time round with the citizenship scheme. The EU still allows Member States to determine who can become their citizen BUT given the implications on EU Citizenship the conditions for granting such citizenship may be scrutinised.

3. And this is the hardest one to get for the sceptics. It is basically summarised as you cannot have the cake and eat it (or the more expressive maltese “tridha hobbla u tredda”). Membership of the EU brings benefits. Huge benefits for both citizens and the country as a whole. These benefits come with obligations of loyalty to the system. Member States cannot expect to undermine the system while continuing to enjoy the benefits. It is really that simple. It is useless crying wolf every time you are found to have fallen foul of the common rules.

Leave the EU? Mexit? Possibly… consider it but only after you have really weighed the overall losses that will inevitably be incurred. I am quite sure you will think twice before thinking of leaving the EU again.

Facebook Comments Box

Categories
Politics

The Passport Judgment Aftermath (II)

Facts and Explainers

Part of the reaction, or backlash, to today´s judgment includes the incredible assertion that the fact that the solution in the judgment was diametrically opposed to the Advocate General´s Opinion somehow diminished the quality of the judgment.

Such a position displays an ignorance of procedure before the EU Court. The Opinion given by an AG is normally requested by the Court itself and is an opportunity to obtain a detailed analysis of one or more possible solutions to the issue before the Court. It is by its very nature non-binding.

The Advocate General’s Opinion at the Court of Justice of the European Union is followed in about 75–80% of cases. However, the judges are not bound by it, and they diverge in roughly 20–25% of instances. While the Advocate General provides a detailed and independent legal analysis, the final judgment rests solely with the Court, which may adopt, modify, or completely depart from the Opinion depending on its own deliberations.

There have been several high-profile cases where the Court did not follow the Advocate General’s Opinion. In **Google Spain (C-131/12)**, AG Jääskinen opposed a broad “right to be forgotten,” yet the Court recognized it, requiring Google to delist links on request. In **Schrems I (C-362/14)**, AG Bot found flaws in the Safe Harbor agreement but suggested nuanced remedies; the Court instead invalidated Safe Harbor outright.

In **Wightman (C-621/18)**, AG Campos Sánchez-Bordona concluded that the UK could unilaterally revoke Article 50 TEU, and while the Court agreed, it gave more precise conditions for such a revocation. In **Coman (C-673/16)**, AG Wathelet advocated strong residence rights for same-sex spouses across the EU; the Court upheld the outcome but based its judgment narrowly on free movement law rather than broader marriage recognition.

These examples illustrate that while the Advocate General’s Opinions are highly influential, they serve ultimately as a guide rather than a command. The Court of Justice carefully considers them but reaches its own conclusions based on legal interpretation, judicial consensus, and the wider context of European Union law.

Facebook Comments Box

Categories
Politics

The Passport Judgment Aftermath (1)

Facts and Explainers

Here´s an exercise for all the whataboutists active on social media defending Malta´s passport scheme. One of the arguments being bandied around is in fact that other countries still have such schemes. I knew this was not true and that Malta´s was the last one standing till today; but do not take it from me. I asked ChatGPT instead and here is the result….

How many countries in the EU currently have a citizenship by investment scheme?

As of April 2025, no European Union (EU) member state offers a citizenship by investment (CBI) scheme—that is, a program granting immediate citizenship in exchange for a financial investment without substantial residency requirements.​

Malta was the last EU country to operate such a scheme. However, on April 29, 2025, the European Court of Justice ruled that Malta’s “golden passport” program violated EU law by commodifying citizenship and undermining the principles of solidarity and mutual trust among member states. The Court emphasized that granting EU citizenship in exchange for payment undermines the integrity of citizenship, national bonds, and mutual trust among EU member states. Prior to this, Cyprus and Bulgaria had already terminated their CBI schemes following pressure from the European Commission over similar concerns.​

While direct citizenship by investment programs have been discontinued, several EU countries continue to offer residence by investment (RBI) schemes, commonly known as “golden visas.” These programs grant residency rights to investors, which may eventually lead to citizenship through naturalization, subject to residency duration, language proficiency, and integration requirements. Countries such as Portugal, Greece, Spain, and Hungary maintain such RBI programs, though they are under increasing scrutiny and regulatory tightening.

Facebook Comments Box

Categories
Mediawatch

What do Trump and Peppi Azzopardi have in common? (Nikkonfermaw li Norfolk Tezisti)

In another life – pre-Trump, pre-Covid, pre-two daughters – in the early days of J’accuse this blog, I had posted a little piece called “Nikkonfermaw li Norfolk Tezisti”. Snowed in, in my comfy flat in Merl I had chanced upon an episode of Xarabank that for that day had turned into a Maltese version of Would I lie to You? Now this was no David Mitchell or Lee Mack but a bunch of people unkown to me being compered by the dinosaur of Maltese TV at the time – Peppi Azzopardi.

This was 2008, and one of the storytellers on the show mentioned Norfolk en passant and this prompted good old Peppi to ask one of his assitants to…. confirm that Norfolk exists. Which they did. And they ended the show with the cringeworthy statement “Nikkonfermaw li Norfolk Tezisti” (we confirm that Norfolk exists). Any East Anglians watching the show that day must have felt relieved.

Fast forward to the day the Orange Clown residing in the White House announced his tarriffs on the world with much pomp and little circumstance. Within the absurdity of the measures that shoot the global economy back a century and a half lay a lovely easter egg waiting for exploitation by critics and comedians alike. For the Carrot Faced Buffoon had actually slapped tarriffs on uninhabited or sparsely inhabited places such as the Heard and MacDonald Islands and… wait for it… Norfolk Island.

While economists and analysts the world over were busy picking up the pieces of their jaws that had collectively clattered to the ground during the shit show that was the announcement of tarriffs, some others were trying to decipher the reason Putin’s Puppet would choose to punish islands whose main inhabitants are penguins.

Well it turns out that the reason behind this is an administrative error of sorts. A very lax person or persons somewhere in the US administration who was responsible for collecting trade data seems to have mislabelled certain transactions involving places such as Norfolk, VA (Virginia) – attributing them instead to an island 1,500 km east of Australia in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. You see. It’s not that Norfolk does not exist. In this case, it’s simply the wrong Norfolk.

That, ladies and gentlemen, says it all. In 2008, I thought that if a TV talk show host needs to ask his crew to confirm that Norfolk really exists and was not a figment of the imagination of a participant then we had hit the bottom. I was wrong. In 2025 the Leader of the Free World (not sure this still applies) created a global tarriff list based on data provided by minions who couldn’t tell their Pacific Islands from US states.

That’s all (Nor)folks! (sorry)

According to an analysis of US import data and shipping records, multiple shipments of goods were classified as having originated from Norfolk Island or Heard and McDonald islands when neither the company address, nor the port of departure for the shipment, nor the destination port were located in those territories. In some cases involving Norfolk Island, which is 1,600km north-east of Sydney and has a population of 2,188, the confusion appears to have resulted from the fact that the company’s address or port of departure is Norfolk, UK, or the destination is Norfolk, Virginia in the US, or a company’s registered address in New Hampshire (NH) has been listed instead as Norfolk Island (NI).

(the Guardian)

Facebook Comments Box

Categories
Citizenship Constitutional Development

Is Bill 125 challengeable under EU Law?

Wednesday’s protest outside parliament is all about challenging Bill 125. Repubblika has already registered a court protest against the bill, showing a clear intention to use all legal avenues to stop it from coming into effect. One of the main criticisms of the Bill is that it signifies a step back, and not forward, in the protection and safeguard of citizen rights by weakening what has proven to be an effective tool in the control and supervision of executive power.

It has been argued in some circles that one possible avenue of challenging the Bill (or the law once it comes into effect) is by arguing its incompatibility with Malta’s EU obligations. In other words, the law would constitute a breach of EU law. More specifically, the nature of the law would be such that it would constitute a violation of the Principle of Non-Regression. Government exponents have been quick to shoot down this potential avenue of redress, claiming that the aforementioned principle is only applicable to judicial reforms. Bill 125, limited to reforming in genere inquiries, would not fall under that principle – at least that is what they claim.

Since its explicit acknowledgment in the Repubblika judgment (Case C-896/19), the Principle of Non-Regression has emerged as a significant instrument employed by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to safeguard the rule of law within the EU. In Repubblika, the Court articulated a clear prohibition on national reforms that diminish judicial independence, reinforcing the idea that once an EU Member State attains certain standards of protection for judicial independence, regressive measures are not allowed.

Following Repubblika, the CJEU has consistently reiterated that maintaining attained levels of judicial independence and rule of law standards is not optional but obligatory for Member States. For instance, this principle was underscored in subsequent rulings, where judicial reforms proposed in various Member States were scrutinized for potentially weakening pre-existing standards.

However, an essential question remains: does this Principle of Non-Regression apply solely to judicial independence, or can it extend to other fields of EU law?

The broader interpretation, emerging from doctrinal debates and scholarly analysis, suggests potential applicability beyond the judicial sphere. Although initially associated explicitly with rule of law contexts, non-regression could logically extend to other fundamental areas safeguarded by EU law, including environmental standards, social rights, and consumer protection. In fact, the broader application aligns with EU objectives to ensure continual progress toward enhanced standards, reflecting an underlying EU constitutional ethos aimed at safeguarding and progressively developing established protections.

Nonetheless, while the theoretical scope for such broader application exists, concrete affirmation by the CJEU outside judicial contexts is yet to materialize definitively. While Repubblika has solidly anchored non-regression within judicial reforms, its extension into broader domains remains a dynamic, evolving area of EU jurisprudence, awaiting further clarification from future case law.

In any case it is not at all a given fact that a potential challenge of the Bill 125 made law based on incompatibility with EU law would be thrown out by the EU court. The principle of non-regression, enshrined in another Malta-related case is clearly ripe for the use against laws such as Bill 125.

This would be even more the case should it be proven that by enacting Bill 125 Malta is failing its obligation under article 19 of the TFUE: “Member States shall provide remedies sufficient to ensure effective legal protection in the fields covered by Union law.” It could be argued that this article 19 obligation encapsulates the citizen’s right to access inquiries that is being curtailed by Bill 125. “The fields covered by Union law” would incidentally include issues such as corruption related to EU funds that may be the subject of such inquiries.

In short, the odds are strongly in favour of any such challenge. I harbour little doubts on the admissibility of such an action and less on its success.

Facebook Comments Box

Categories
Constitutional Development

Peace for our time – the 20 year post

Today marks the twentieth anniversary for J’accuse the blog. Twenty years ago I clicked on the Post button for the first time (after 12 failed attempts) and the blog was up and running. That’s a lot of time that’s gone by and in the meantime writing does not feel the same. For years blogging came as a second nature as J’accuse elbowed its space in the national media. Writing daily was second nature, as normal as having breakfast.

What changed recently was the motivation. That feeling of overwhelming helplessness of an uphill battle against misinformation. There was a sudden void of real interlocutors as the public space became monopolized by the loud, the bullies and the manipulators. This was the time of the rapid increase in the rate of backsliding in the rule of law.

We had been the ones to issue the first warnings. I had yelled until I could yell no more that the politics of this nation was fated to recede in a downward spiral. Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination precipitated this state of affairs. Seven years ago I switched to writing for The Shift more often and less on this blog. However even that became frustrating. I felt like a broken record, a Cassandra on repeat doomed not to be believed and not to be heard.

And now the New World Order beckons. The world of Trumpian non-sequiturs were a spade is not a spade because Trump says it should not be. The quest for the truth has just become ever so complicated.

Which brings me to the subject of this anniversary post: Peace for our time.

Over the last few days we have heard the Trumpian pitch for “peace” in the what he calls the War in Ukraine. The mantra from the MAGA administration is now that (Ukraine President) Zelensky is only interested in prolonging the war. They say he is too arrogant to accept the terms of peace that Donald Trump has so graciously negotiated. Having humiliated Zelensky in the Oval Office Trump has turned the screw further and seems to be forcing Zelensky to the table to underwrite the “peace” only Trump can guarantee.

Some politicians, among which Malta’s Prime Minister, have no gone on record saying that “Ukraine cannot win this war”. It forms part of a wider assessment made by the PM in the context of the EU debate on rearmament following the evident signs of MAGA’s relinquishing of its defence obligations with its decades old allies. This new spin is framed in terms of peace-loving, peace-seeking propaganda with the idea being that Zelensky’s Ukraine must accept whatever deal is available so long as the guns cease to fire.

Robert Abela, Donald Trump, Viktor Orban are the modern day Neville Chamberlains desperate to sell us the idea of “Peace for our time”. Abela is keen to highglight Malta’s outdated neutrality (a Cold War concept) and his firm determination not to fork out one cent that will be spent on arming a new Europe even if that would mean that Europe is finally no longer dependent on any other force for its own security. Aside from the fact that Abela is very evidently trying to position himself against the warmonger figure of Roberta Metsola that his party has manufactured meticulously there are other issues that are being ignored.

Here are a few facts that the “Ukraine will not win this war” rabble do not want you to understand:

  1. Ukraine is not interested in “winning the war“. This is not a war in the sense that Ukraine did not choose to go to war and never intended to be struggling for survival. This was an Act of Aggression by Russia on Ukrainian soil. Worse, it is a violation of the 1994 agreement when Ukraine agreed to relenquish its share of the Soviet nuclear arsenal in return for guarantees that Russia would respect its borders – guarantees underwritten by… wait for it… the United States and the United Kingdom. The goal of Ukraine and of any self-respecting liberal democracy supporting Ukraine would not be simply to put down the guns but rather a return of the Ukraine to its borders. An unconditional return with the appropriate guarantees.
  2. Peace is not defined by Donald Trump and JD Vance. Especially the “peace” that involves arm-wrestling the victim of aggression into giving up resources to the transaction hungry wolf of a president. That is not peace. It is appeasment. Appeasment of Russia and Russia’s greed. Remember this aggression began with Russia claiming its right to safeguard its citizens who still lived in parts of the Ukraine. Could there be a more stark reminder of the situation of the Sudeten Germans at the time of Chamberlain’s peace for our time?
  3. EU security independence is no longer an option but a must. Putin’s Russia and now Trump’s America have shown that they do not care for the rules of the world order. There is no respect for the sovereignty of other nations and even less for the maintaining of alliances that have hitherto ensured security in the European region. The EU opting for rearmament is an EU that is painfully aware of Trump’s disconnection and is preparing itself to go it alone. Until Trump’s arrival Europe had lived under the safety of a shield that relied on mutual US-EU cooperation. With that shield down there is no option but to prepare for the worst. The sooner Robert Abela’s government realises that our fate is deeply intertwined with the rest of the European community the quicker will they shed the illusion that neutrality will pose a problem for the likes of Trump and Putin.

We need less Neville Chamberlains in this world. Sadly, the world of post-truth also means that there are many who are prepared to believe in “Peace for our time” promises that lead to nowhere.

That’s the truth, if I lie.

Facebook Comments Box