Watch: €90 Million Project To Electrify Malta’s Buses Dropped By The Government, PN Reveals
A €90 million project intended to electrify the Malta Public Transport fleet has been dropped by the government which has decided to withdraw its plans for the use of €34 million of EU funding.
Nationalist Party MPs revealed the news of this “secret” decision during a press conference earlier today, saying that Malta withdrew its plans to use €34 million in funding from the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Fund earmarked for this larger electrification project intended for “over 100” buses.
PN MP Ryan Callus cited correspondence sent to the European Commission before claiming that Malta will not be going through with a private €50 million investment planned by Malta Public Transport to electrify its buses.
This consequently means that an additional €7 million in Connecting Europe Facility funding intended for the state agency to install more charging infrastructure for electric vehicles have now been lost. These funds were won through a private company project to establish charging station infrastructure for electric public transport vehicles.
“The Maltese economy has lost €50 million in private funding and €7 million in EU funding. It now has the question of how it will spend the larger sum of EU funds amounting to €34 million.”
Callus went on to say that without the intervention of the Opposition Party, this decision would have remained a “secret” and it displays the “lack of direction” possessed by the government.
The PN blasted the government’s “incompetence” for causing this loss in funding and breaching its agreement with the European Commission under Measure C2.I.3 of the Recovery and Resilience Plan, approved in September 2021 and updated in September 2023. This has left the country with €34 million in funding it must earmark for another plan and submit to the Commission for approval.
PN MP Eve Borg Bonello referenced the current climate crisis during this event, stating that this decision “simply does not make sense especially since we know that Malta has the highest growth of emissions in the EU”.
What should Malta use the €34 million for now?
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