Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1471699
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 26 JUNE 2022 10 NEWS Mondays on Facebook 5:30pm NICOLE MEILAK LABOUR MEP Cyrus Engerer questioned Malta's abortion ban after an American woman was unable to request a termination of her pregnancy to safeguard her health. Andre Prudente was on hol- iday in Malta with her partner Jay Weeldreyer when her waters broke at 16 weeks of pregnancy. She lost all amniotic fluid and had a detached placenta, but doctors at Mater Dei Hospital refused to terminate the preg- nancy because the foetus still had a heartbeat. She is now be- ing flown out to Spain where her pregnancy can be terminated. "Shouldn't that woman have been able to have her procedure to save her life in Malta? What happens if next time it's a Mal- tese woman in the same position without the same national insur- ance that this couple had?" En- gerer said. Sophie in 't Veld, a Dutch MEP forming part of Renew, said that she doesn't see why wom-en in Malta should have less choice than women in other EU coun- tries. "Women have a right to choose over their own bodies. If they can lead the IMF, Germany, France, the European Parliament or the European Commission, surely they can run their bodies and their own lives," she said. European Green Deal With the war in Ukraine push- ing prices up, Labour MEP Al- fred Sant insists the EU needs a fallback position on its European Green Deal and rethink how it will find the funds and energy to see the deal through. "Gas supplies have been clamped down. But to do the Green Deal you need funds. In order to change over on that ba- sis, funds are going to be hard to find. I think there's a serious prospect that the Green Deal will have to be delayed," Sant said. "My argument is that the EU needs a fallback position on the Green Deal in terms of fi-nance, energy, not just where but which energy, and perhaps a rethinking of nuclear." Labour MEP Josianne Cuta- jar pointed out that increasing import prices has a particular effect on the Maltese economy. "We depend on importation for a lot of essential goods. We saw these spiralling prices in energy from before the war. Now with the war there are more concerns in place." "We need a contingency plan that takes into account the reali- ty of certain islands and member states like ours that depend on imports by sea and air." The Digital Economy Big tech giants like Facebook and Google are the new public utilities of our time, but Labour MEP Alex Agius Saliba and Ger- man Greens MEP Alexandra Geese insist that these compa- nies can be regulated in the pub- lic interest. Agius Saliba recalled that lob- byists, especially from big tech companies, would always tell MEPs that regulating these com- panies and their ecosystem is a highly difficult feat. "From our experience working on the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act, we proved that as legislators, with the ben- efit of regulating the internal market and representing the 27 member states, ultimately we can leverage our weight to regu- late the ecosystem," he said. Geese added that the EU's in- tention was not to censor any legal content uploaded online. "We just want to know what you're doing," she said of large internet platforms. "These companies know all about us. They collect enormous amounts of data, huge data pro- files about every one of us. They can manipulate societies, and external actors have ued these mechanisms to bring about Brexit, influence the 2016 elec- tions." "They say that it's private prop- erty what we do with our algo- rithms, it's trade secrets. We're proving them wrong. The way your algorithms function poses a risk for fundamental rights, de- mocracy, protection of minors, rights against women." Malta's MEPs talk abortion rights, European Green Deal and the digital economy Watch now on Facebook Labour MEP Cyrus Engerer and Renew MP Sophie In't Veld