15/10/2026
We have joined seventeen other organisations in writing to Foreign Minister Chris Fearne, calling on Malta to actively support a European Union ban on trade with illegal Israeli settlements, and to pass its own national law prohibiting such trade.
🚨 The letter follows Malta's absence, at the EU Foreign Affairs Council on 13 July, from a group of eleven member states calling on the European Commission to propose settlement trade restrictions. The initiative fell three states short of the number needed to force the Commission to act.
"Malta has recognised Palestine and called the settlements illegal," said PEN Malta President Kurt Borg. "What it has not done is act on that when it counted. The government says it prefers a route everyone knows leads nowhere. That is a choice, and Malta made it while a genocide is under way. We are asking the minister to make a different one."
⚠️ The government's stated position is that such measures should go through the EU's foreign policy framework, which requires the agreement of all 27 member states. The signatories say this guarantees nothing will happen, because countries such as Germany will never agree, and that choosing the one route certain to fail while declining to support the one that can work "is obstruction by procedure."
The letter argues Malta's position contradicts its own record. Malta recognised the State of Palestine and endorsed the 2024 International Court of Justice opinion, which found that states must not assist in maintaining the occupation, including through trade. "Consistency is what is at stake," the letter says. "Either the occupation is unlawful and Malta acts accordingly, or it was never a principle at all."
📣 The signatories also call on Malta to pass its own law banning settlement trade, and note that it would not be acting alone in doing so. Spain, Ireland and the Netherlands have already adopted such laws, with Belgium and Norway following and bills tabled in Italy and France. The United Kingdom is working on a ban covering goods and services.
FREE PALESTINE 🍉
aditus | Association for Justice, Equality and Peace | Blue Door Education | The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation | Faculty of Education - University of Malta | Friends of the Earth Malta | Ġustizzja għall-Palestina | Humanists Malta | Il-Kollettiv | Inizjamed | Maltese Association of Social Workers | Migrants Commission of the Archdiocese of Malta | Moviment Graffitti | PEN Malta | Repubblika | SOS Malta | SpeakUP Malta | YMCA Malta
