EU Parliament Names Journalism Prize for Daphne Caruana Galizia

Three years after being killed by a car bomb as she was looking into high-level corruption and ties between Malta's government and business executives, money laundering banks and mobsters, the European Parliament has named a prize in “Outstanding Journalism Work” in the name of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

The 20,000-euro ($23,661.70) prize will be awarded beginning in October 2021 – the month she was murdered – to individual journalists or teams for their outstanding journalism work based on the principles and values of the European Union, judged by a panel of independent journalists, said the newspaper New Europe.

“This is a special day for the European Parliament, for all journalists ... Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia’s legacy will remain alive, as she will now be remembered every year during the ceremony of the Prize for Journalism,” said David Casa, an MEP from Malta who proposed the prize.

Sven Giegold, a German MEP from the Greens/EFA group, who attended the Parliament’s missions to Malta that did little to push the government to probe the murder said the prize “will strengthen investigative and courageous journalism and press freedom.”

The murder brought outrage across the country and international condemnation, including a scathing look at the island's reputation for corruption from the US TV show 60 minutes.

It also led to then-Prime Minister Joseph Muscat to resign and saw businessman Yorgen Fenech arrested in 2019, accused of being the mastermind behind the killing, a trial likely two years off with statements being taken privately.

Maltese police said the killing was intended to silence her work on unveiling corruption and money-laundering but the investigation has been slow. Her family keeps driving efforts to hold those responsible accountable.

MEP Roberta Metsola, also from Malta, said the prize is also designed at trying to erase an indelible stain on the country that critics have described as corrupt to the core.

“Daphne Caruana Galizia’s courage in holding power to account and in exposing corruption represents the very best of Maltese and European values and she will be remembered and honored. Assassins may have stopped her pen but her legacy will live on,” she said, The Times of Malta reported.

While the EU's hierarchy mostly stood by, it was EU lawmakers who kept heat on the bloc and Malta's government, along with Galizia's family, although no high-ranking politicians or officials have been tried, with three men accused of the murder.

The former government kept trying to wash away memorials to her memory, sending cleaners to rid a memorial of tributes to her, drawing further fire from critics.

Her supporters said she was a victim of her anti-corruption work and reporting on the Panama Papers, the massive 2016 leak of financial documents about secret offshore accounts around the world, said NBC News.

Resistance to her work and legacy remains in Malta, where her critics condemned her relentless pursuit of wrongdoing and politicians, as Parliament House Speaker Anġlu Farrugia vetoed a proposal to name a hall there in her name. There is no movement in Malta to name a journalism prize for her.