Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1221489
6 MATTHEW AGIUS YOU'VE heard of parental cus- tody… but what about grandpar- ents' rights to see their grand- children when they are locked out of the immediate family? As it turns out, a Maltese court has declared that grand- parents do have a juridical in- terest to request access to their grandchildren in custody cas- es. But this right is not auto- matic and must be given in the best interests of the child. This was established in a case recently decided by Mr Justice Anthony Vella, filed by an Ital- ian couple against their daugh- ter, who is married to a Mal- tese man. The defendants have a daughter aged three and had lived with the plaintiffs in Ita- ly for a number of years. After the birth of their granddaugh- ter, the plaintiffs developed a strong bond with her until in 2017, when her daughter, husband and granddaughter returned to Malta. From then on, they were cut off from their granddaughter, even when they travelled to Malta. They argued that although the parents have the primary care and custody of the minor child, there was no legal justi- fication for the grandchildren not to have a healthy relation- ship with their parents. The plaintiffs asked the Court to allow them to have access to their granddaughter by estab- lishing days and time when this can take place. The defendants filed a state- ment of defence in which they held that there were similar proceedings in Italy which are now final and therefore, this case cannot be heard. They claimed also that the plaintiffs do not have a juridical interest in this case, since the law does not give a legal remedy. The defendants pleaded that what the plaintiffs requested was "a threat to public order because it would establish a new norm for grandparents to have right of access, a precedent in our le- gal system." But the court said that the de- fendants had accepted that the plaintiffs did have an emotion- al and general interest in seeing their granddaughter, but all the same they did not have a jurid- ical interest emanating from any law. "As has already been reiterat- ed by this Court, the decision as to whether there should be visitation rights between the grandparents and the grand- child depends upon whether, after having assessed the whole case, it deems it in the best in- terests of that child and this in itself entails a decision on the merits of the case. This Court is not momentarily dealing with this matter in this decision, be- fore it resolves the procedural issues raised in this case. "The parental authority re- mains vested within the par- ents of the minor child and essentially granting visitation rights to grandparents can never be construed as a lim- itation of parental authority. Ultimately, it is always the best interests of the child that are to prevail," said the court. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union ensures that at all times, even when the child's best interests are in conflict with the parents' needs, the child's interests are to prevail, both in short and long term, said the judge, re- jecting the defendants' plea on parental authority. Therefore, the right of access of grandpar- ents is not automatic and must be given in the best interest of the child. All four of the defendants' pleas were rejected by the court and the proceedings will now continue for a decision on the merits. maltatoday | SUNDAY • 15 MARCH 2020 NEWS EU's powerful translation tool not yet 'public' PAUL COCKS ONE of the recent innovations inside the European Commis- sion has been an EU-funded machine translation programme which is however only accessible to civil servants. In what is described as a more trustworthy version of 'Google Translate', the eTranslation tool, funded by the Connecting Euro- pean Facility, allows public ad- ministrations to produce fast and faithful translations from Mal- tese to English and vice-versa. Yet the translation tool remains inaccessible to the public, despite its obvious benefits to produce time-saving translations of large texts. The Commission's own rep- resentatives in Malta recently spoke of the eTranslation tool in an interview with University of Malta research magazine Think. The eTranslation platform has a distinct advantage by basing itself on established sources and by being built on a neural, not statistical, machine translation model. "Malta has an added advan- tage when it comes to this tool as we're very much a bilingual country, unlike others who would need a bridge translation to English [using English as an Italian grandparents make Malta bid for right to see their niece The plaintiffs asked the Court to allow them to have access to their granddaughter by establishing days