33.

Welcomes the recent announcement by the Government of Malta on initiation of the legislative processes to implement various Venice Commission recommendations; calls on the Government and Parliament of Malta to implement all the Venice Commission recommendations without exception, also in a retroactive manner where relevant, so as to ensure that past and current decisions, positions and structures are brought into line with these recommendations, and in particular, — to strengthen the independence, powers of oversight and capabilities of the members of the Maltese House of Representatives, in particular by tightening rules on incompatibilities and by providing for an appropriate salary and for non-partisan support; — to publicly announce vacancies for judicial positions (paragraph 44); — to change the composition of the JAC, to allow at least half of its members to be judges elected by their peers, and to endow the JAC with the competence to rank candidates on the basis of merit and directly propose those candidates to the President for appointment, also in the case of appointment of the Chief Justice (paragraph 44); — to give the power of removal of judges or magistrates to the Commission for the Administration of Justice and to provide for an appeal in court against disciplinary measures imposed by that Commission (paragraph 53); — to set up an office of an independent Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), to be responsible for all public prosecutions, taking over the current prosecutorial tasks of the Attorney General, as well as the prosecutorial tasks of the police and the magisterial inquests, as recommended by the Venice Commission (paragraphs 61-73); calls on the Government of Malta to subject this potentially newly established DPP to judicial review, in particular regarding decisions of non-prosecution (paragraph 68, 73); — to reform the PCAC, both by ensuring an appointment process that is less dependent on the executive branch and on the Prime Minister in particular, and by ensuring that the PCAC reports lead to actual prosecutions; also to consider the option of having the PCAC report directly to a newly established DPP (paragraph 72); — to initiate a constitutional reform to ensure that judgments of the Constitutional Court will lead, without parliament having to intervene, to the annulment of provisions found to be unconstitutional (paragraph 79); — to abolish the practice of having part-time MPs, increase the salary of MPs, restrict the appointment of MPs to officially appointed bodies, put at the disposal of MPs sufficient support staff and independent knowledge and advice, and refrain from the extensive use of delegated legislation (paragraph 94); — to ensure that requests for information by the Ombudsman are fully complied with by the authorities, that the Ombudsman’s reports are debated in Parliament, that the office of the Ombudsman is regulated at the constitutional level, and that the Freedom of Information Act is updated (paragraphs 100-101); — to reshape the process of appointing Permanent Secretaries, namely by merit-based selection by an Independent Civil Service Commission, rather than by the Prime Minister (paragraphs 119-120); — to seriously limit the practice of ‘positions or persons of trust’ and to introduce clear legal rules and a constitutional amendment that form the basis and framework for regulating this practice (paragraph 129); — to change the appointment procedure for the Police Commissioner, namely by making it merit-based by introducing a public competition (paragraph 134);