If Metsola Was Wrong, Why Doesn’t Malta Even Have A Lobbying Register?
I am aware that some people will accuse me of defending or deflecting attention away from Roberta Metsola but so be it. I feel this has to be said.
What amazes me the most from this whole story about Metsola’s husband is how high the bar for transparency is at the European Parliament.
Metsola’s ‘sin’ is that she spearheaded new ethics rules that oblige senior European Parliament members to declare conflicts of interests but not the President herself.
This meant that she didn’t have to declare that her husband Ukko is a lobbyist for a major cruise ship company, even though he had already declared his role on the publicly available EU Transparency Register.
Should the rules be extended to the European Parliament President even though she doesn’t actually draft or vote on laws herself? Sure, more transparency is always a good thing.
However, it is quite bizarre to see government exponents kicking up a fuss over transparency rules completely alien to the Maltese system that the government has repeatedly refused to implement.
From the PL's 2017 election manifesto
Malta doesn’t even have a transparency register for lobbyists. The PL had proposed it in its 2017 electoral manifesto and former minister Aaron Farrugia had promised to set one up but the idea never caught on.
Neither are there rules obliging MPs to declare potential conflicts of interest when discussing legislation in the House, despite proposals by the OECD and the Standards Commissioner.
If Metsola was wrong, then surely the government is too. Why should the European Parliament have higher standards than the local one?
If PL exponents genuinely feel shocked and scandalised at what Metsola has done, then hopefully they will pressure the government to update its transparency rules… at the very least start the transparency register it had proposed seven years ago.
Should Malta introduce a transparency register for lobbyists?
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