Malta is facing renewed international pressure over corruption, judicial accountability and the safety of journalists following the acquittal of businessman Yorgen Fenech in the case concerning the 2017 assassination of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
The verdict has intensified scrutiny of the Maltese authorities at a moment when the Council of Europe is again examining whether reforms promised after Caruana Galizia’s murder have been fully implemented. Fenech, who had been accused of complicity in the assassination and criminal association, was acquitted by an eight-to-one jury decision after a lengthy trial. Malta’s attorney general is preparing to challenge the outcome, according to reports.
The acquittal does not change the fact that several people have already been convicted or admitted involvement in carrying out the car-bomb attack that killed Caruana Galizia on 16 October 2017. However, no one has been convicted of commissioning the assassination, leaving one of Europe’s most closely watched press-freedom cases without a judicially established mastermind.
The latest developments have prompted the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to revisit Malta’s handling of the case. Its Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights has heard evidence from Caruana Galizia’s son, Matthew Caruana Galizia, and her sister, Corinne Vella, as part of a new examination of Malta’s implementation of reforms arising from the assassination. Labour peer Shami Chakrabarti, serving as rapporteur, is preparing a report entitled Justice delayed: the unfinished implementation of the Daphne Caruana Galizia case.
The inquiry comes against a broader concern that structural weaknesses identified years ago remain unresolved. Malta’s independent public inquiry into the assassination concluded in 2021 that the state bore responsibility for creating a climate in which the killing became possible, citing institutional failures and a culture of impunity. It recommended extensive reforms covering the rule of law, public administration, media freedom and the protection of journalists.
Five years later, campaigners say many of those recommendations have still not been put into practice. The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation said in July 2026 that most of the inquiry’s proposed reforms remained unimplemented, arguing that journalists therefore continue to face some of the systemic dangers highlighted by the original investigation.
Concerns are not confined to press freedom. European institutions have repeatedly questioned Malta’s record in tackling high-level corruption. Previous European Commission assessments noted that the country lacked a convincing record of final convictions in major corruption cases, while European Parliament resolutions have warned that ineffective enforcement and political interference can create a wider culture of impunity.
That connection between corruption and media safety lies at the heart of the renewed Council of Europe scrutiny. Investigative journalists often become particularly vulnerable when they investigate relationships involving political power, organised crime, financial misconduct and influential business interests. Caruana Galizia had spent years reporting on precisely those subjects, including alleged corruption, money laundering and questionable links between political and commercial actors.
Her assassination became a defining European press-freedom case, demonstrating how threats against an individual journalist can evolve into a wider test of democratic institutions. It also triggered legislative and political initiatives beyond Malta, including stronger European measures against abusive lawsuits designed to intimidate reporters and public-interest campaigners.
The continuing controversy surrounding the murder investigation therefore carries implications well beyond one criminal trial. Critics argue that Malta’s credibility now depends less on declarations of reform than on whether its institutions can demonstrate that corruption allegations are investigated independently, officials are subject to meaningful accountability and journalists can pursue sensitive investigations without intimidation.
Particular attention is likely to fall on measures intended to prevent obstruction of justice, strengthen independent oversight, improve whistleblower protections and ensure that politically exposed individuals cannot benefit from institutional protection. The European Parliament has previously warned that journalists will remain at risk while impunity for corruption persists.
The issue also has a European dimension because Malta operates inside the EU’s single market and common legal framework. Weak regulatory or enforcement structures in one member state can have consequences across borders, particularly where financial services, corporate structures and transnational business activity are involved. That has strengthened arguments for closer European scrutiny when domestic rule-of-law deficiencies appear persistent.
For Caruana Galizia’s family and supporters, however, the central issue remains accountability for her killing.
Nearly nine years after the assassination, those who physically participated in the murder have faced justice, but the question of who ultimately ordered it remains unresolved in court. The latest acquittal has therefore reopened a debate that Malta has struggled to put behind it: whether the institutional conditions exposed by the journalist’s murder have genuinely been dismantled, or whether the same weaknesses continue beneath a layer of incomplete reform.
The Council of Europe’s renewed examination will now provide another international test of that question. Its conclusions may prove significant not only for Malta’s political and judicial institutions, but also for the broader European principle that investigative journalists must be able to expose corruption without placing their lives at risk.
