Andrew Galizia at the 548th Plenary Session

Andrew Caruana Galizia, son of Daphne Caruana Galizia, the Maltese journalist who was assassinated on 16 October 2017 invited to the plenary session of the EESC, on 11 December 2019. He enhances the role of civil society in EU to protect functioning of the Rule of law.

"One of the things that my mother used to say is that to improve the world it is not sufficient to simply do good, it's also necessary to fight the bad. And this is what civil society in Europe now has to start doing. It is no longer sufficient to campaign for transparency. It is now necessary to fight the corrupt, to tackle the crisis head on. We shouldn't pretend that Europe isn't facing a corruption crisis, it is. This is a phenomenon that has attacked not only Malta but several other European Union Member States and it's spreading right through the heart of the European Union. This is a problem for which we are all responsible: journalists, governments, European Institutions and also civil society. It took the assassination of my mother for Maltese civil society to wake up. And I have no doubt that the strength that civil society has shown in Malta in the past three years would have been enough to protect my mother's life had it existed while she was still alive".

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