Misreading the Venice Commission

Abstract

Justice Minister Edward Zammit Lewis has repeated his own spin (DOI PR 211042, June 1, 2021) that the Venice Commission, in its June 1 Malta ‘Opinion on the Reform of Fair Requirements Relating to Substantial Administrative Fines’, ruled in the government’s favour that the latter’s constitutional amendments were not in breach of human rights. He repeated this blatant misreading of the opinion in his recent contribution ‘Commission ruled in favour’ (June 9) in reply to our article ‘We were right after all’ (June 3). The government has been trying for the past months to amend the constitution to deny all persons in Malta the right of access to a court of law in criminal proceedings. It wants to confer the power to impose fines which can amount to millions of euros, so far exercised exclusively by courts presided over by independent judges and magistrates, to “authorities” mostly made up of politically-appointed persons of trust with zero guarantees of impartiality and zero guarantees of independence. And he invites readers to believe that the Venice Commission endorsed this parody of the rule of law. [Excerpt]