Casa nominates Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation for European Citizen’s Prize

Nationalist MEP David Casa has nominated the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation for the European Citizen’s Prize.

The European Citizen’s Prize recognises initiatives that contribute to European cooperation and the promotion of common values. Casa hailed the Foundation for its work promoting the rule of law, fighting for justice, and striving toward ending impunity.

“The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation has been on the frontline against state corruption. Its work in securing access to information and realising fundamental rights through advocacy for better governance has been unparalleled and necessary," Casa said. “It has been a trailblazer for civil society capacity-building during a period in our history when civil society played a vital role.”

He said it was nominated for promoting the core rights enshrined in the Charter on Fundamental Freedoms. Casa said it does so through awareness-raising, capacity-building, and litigation aimed at instituting change.

“The assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia shocked the world. For Malta, it exposed glaring flaws in the way it was governed, in the way its institutions were undermined, and in how the rule of law was eroded,” Casa said.

Casa said that the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation was a project that mobilised lawyers, activists and journalists to directly challenge the Maltese Government where it exceeded its powers. He also said it worked actively to restore the rule of law through all the mechanisms and tools available.

In September, the Foundation announced the Public Interest Litigation Network (PILN), Malta’s first-ever access to justice initiative, composed of lawyers and law firms offering legal representation to victims of discrimination, human rights violations, abuse of power and state collusion in criminal activity.

The PILN’s scope is to create legal precedents to improve the good governance and human rights credentials of Malta, and to curtail abusive action by the state through legal action.     

The Foundation set up the Malta Investigative Journalism Centre (MIJC), a collaborative platform, to train and equip independent journalists with the tools to investigate public interest stories. It launched last April, with the initial publication of the Passport Papers, a joint investigation into Malta’s sale of passports as a legalised transaction.

The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation was founded by the family of the late investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia after her assassination in 2017, to ensure effective justice for her murder and to safeguard her work.

A public inquiry into the Caruana Galizia murder had concluded that the Maltese State had created a culture of "impunity" and had to bear responsibility for the murder.