Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1535569
3 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 21 MAY 2025 NEWS BE EXCLUSIVE BE EXCLUSIVE BE EXCLUSIVE BE EXCLUSIVE BE EXCLUSIVE BE EXCLUSIVE BE EXCLUSIVE BE EXCLUSIVE TRADEMARK REGISTER YOUR BEFORE YOU MAKE IT PUBLIC REGISTER YOUR TRADEMARK CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 Apart from practicing as a lawyer, Dalli is Energy Minister Miriam Dalli's sister and the Labour Party's nominee on the Electoral Commission in Malta. Dalli had an interview with the panel of experts at Comité 255 last week in Lux- embourg. This is the final stage before the committee expresses an opinion on the suitability of the candidates before it. Dalli told MaltaToday she withdrew her nomination after the interview because she felt it was conducted in a "pre-deter- mined way". She did not elaborate. "On my personal initiative, I wrote to the panel to inform them of my decision to withdraw my nomination," she added. The latest development has left the gov- ernment in an embarrassing situation and a vacancy yet to fill. The post became available after Judge Ramona Frendo was accepted to serve on the European Court of Justice. Frendo had been a judge at the European General Court since 2019. The Maltese government had issued an open call for the vacancy in April last year and five people threw their hat in the ring. Apart from Zammit Lewis and Dalli, the others who showed an interest were: Da- vid Ciliberti, a legal and policy officer at the European Commission's directorate general for justice, who now forms part of European Commissioner Glenn Micallef's cabinet; Rashida Sheikh, a lawyer-linguist with the Maltese language unit at the Eu- ropean Court of Justice; and Jacques René Zammit, a lawyer specialised in EU law, who has been working for almost two dec- ades at the ECJ and is currently the court's press attaché with the English desk. It is unclear who the government will nominate next. "The government has been informed that Dr Dalli has decided to withdraw her nomination. In these circumstances, the ministry is not in a position to com- ment since any comments would be su- perfluous as these proceedings are now exhausted," a ministry spokesperson told MaltaToday. Meanwhile, in a statement on Tues- day afternoon, Nationalist Party justice spokesperson Karol Aquilina called on the government to stop "pushing forward partisan loyalists". Instead, Aquilina added, the govern- ment should reform the judicial nomina- tion process. "It is imperative that Malta's nominees to high-level EU posts are selected on the basis of merit and competence, not par- tisan political convenience, which has so far only served to undermine Malta's rep- utation across Europe," Aquilina said. He lambasted the prime minister and the justice minister for Malta's failure to fill the vacancy at the European court. "Both Robert Abela and Jonathan Attard continue to show they have failed to grasp the seriousness of the scrutiny involved in the appointment of judges to the General Court of the European Union," Aquilina said. European Court of Justice (File photo) Lawyer Veronique Dalli withdrew her nomination for post of European judge