Malta remains committed to the Chinese government’s Belt and Road initiative despite other European countries considering pulling out of the agreement. The One Belt One Road Initiative, now called the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), is an ambitious yet controversial undertaking to boost connectivity and trade across the world with Chinese money and know-how in infrastructure development. In 2018, Malta was among the first European countries to sign an agreement with China to partner with the country to implement its President’s vision of the ‘One Belt One Road’ project. “Unlike some of the other 17 EU countries that signed up to Belt and Road Initiative, Malta thus far did not enter in any agreements to implement projects under this initiative,” the ministry said. Italy is the only G-7 nation to have officially endorsed Chinese President Xi Jinping’s signature foreign policy initiative.

The Audit Bureau Wednesday said Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah spent 40.5 million dinars from the 2022 budget to purchase vehicles for his ministers, deputy ministers, and officials at his office. According to the report, PM Dabaiba approved the ownership of 27 modern 2021 cars for his government ministers immediately after purchasing them, violating the legislation and laws regulating the purchase and use of public-owned cars. The report said the Ministry of Planning managed to pass the deal through manipulation of procedure. To cover the financial gaps, the Ministry of Planning, "with the consent of the PM," transferred the budget from heading III of the 2021 financial year that was meant for development, the bureau indicated. It may be recalled that the Audit Bureau monitored in its annual report for the year 2021 the purchase of 25 luxury cars for the PM's motorcade with a value exceeding 21 million dinars without being registered under the Cabinet Office's ownership.

The Libyan parliament on Wednesday demanded the departure of ambassadors from countries that "support" Israel as it fights Hamas in Gaza, taking specific aim at the United States, Britain, France and Italy. Israel has been bombarding the Gaza Strip since October 7, when Hamas militants launched an attack that Israeli officials say has killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians. "We demand that the ambassadors of the states which support the Zionist entity (Israel) in its crimes leave the territory (of Libya) immediately," the statement said. The parliament denounced "in the strongest terms" the actions of "the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Italy". It said these nations "support the Zionist entity in its crimes" in the Gaza Strip, while their leaders "lecture on human rights and the right of peoples to self-determination".

The demarcation of maritime borders constitutes a point of fundamental regional disagreement with Türkiye on the one hand and Greece, Cyprus, and Egypt on the other. Signs of the disagreement appeared since the signing of a maritime border agreement between the Tripoli government and Türkiye in 2019. Observers believe this path will continue, especially after the unity government announced it would establish a maritime zone adjacent to its borders in the Mediterranean. The new Libyan decision expands the authority of maritime borders from 12 to 24 nautical miles. The demarcation of the Libyan borders in the East Med expands the controversy over the conflict over energy sources in the region.

On Wednesday the Attorney General’s Office called for the enforcement of 8,676 old arrest warrants that have not been carried out. Specifically, it called for the superiors of 1,632 convicted persons working for the Ministry of Interior / it’s affiliates to implement these arrest warrants. The Attorney General’s Office said this comes as part of its measures aimed at strengthening the penal policy. The Attorney General’s Office said the unit took judicial and administrative measures to ensure the implementation of court rulings convicting 8,676 convicts. Subsequently, it instructed their superiors to implement the arrest warrants issued against them.

New gas field developments will align with Libya's move to boost gas production and exports, Khalifa Rajab Abdulsadek, responsible for exploration, development and planning on the NOC board, said on the sidelines of an energy summit in Ravenna, Italy. “It’s good to hear that Libya has such big, ambitious targets” as “Europe and Italy are starving for gas,” said Davide Tabarelli, president of Nomisma Energia. Eni is Libya’s largest foreign gas producer and co-owner with NOC of the 520km Greenstream pipeline – the longest subsea pipeline in the Mediterranean Sea – which connects Libyan gas fields with the Italian gas market. “We're working hard with Eni and other European strategic partners to fill up pipelines and maximising gas exports,” said Abdulsadek. Greenstream, Libya's only gas pipeline, has been running below capacity over the past few years.

Libya’s parliament, the House of Representatives (HoR), based in eastern Libya, yesterday called on the eastern based Libyan government (a government unrecognised by most of the international community) to shut oil and gas exports to Western countries if the Zionist genocidal war in Gaza, Palestine, does not stop. The HoR also called for the immediate expulsion of the Ambassadors of the USA, UK, France, Germany and Italy from Libya as a result of the Gaza-Israeli war.

TRIPOLI, Libya — The Libyan parliament demands the departure of ambassadors from countries that “support” Israel as it fights Hamas in Gaza, taking specific aim at the United States, Britain, France and Italy. In a statement published on its official website, the eastern-based parliament — backed by military strongman Khalifa Haftar in Libya split between two rival administration — threatens to cut energy supplies if “massacres” against Palestinians did not stop. “We demand that the ambassadors of the states which support the Zionist entity (Israel) in its crimes leave the territory (of Libya) immediately,” the statement says. “If the massacres committed by the Zionist enemy do not stop, we demand that the Libyan government suspend the export of oil and gas to the states that support it,” it continues. The parliament denounced “in the strongest terms” the actions of “the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Italy.”It said these nations “support the Zionist entity in its crimes” in the Gaza Strip, while their leaders “lecture on human rights and the right of peoples to self-determination.”

A Dutch shipping company is reportedly facing a criminal investigation over possible violations of the arms embargo against Libya. The Dutch news outlet RTL Nieuws reports today that the Public Prosecution Service (OM) in the Netherlands has commenced a criminal investigation into the Shipping Company Groningen (SCG) after an incident in October 2022. RTL reports that the shipping company did not respond to the UN’s requests for information or the newspaper’s reporter. The shipping company previously issued a statement saying it was in compliance and had the appropriate paperwork. Operation IRINI reported last October that it was the second seizure it had made in three months of banned material being sent to Libya.

“We demand the government halt oil and gas exports to countries supporting Israel in case the Israeli massacres are not stopped,” parliamentary spokesman Abdullah Belihaq said in a statement on Wednesday. There are no indications that the Tripoli GNA government has supported the eastern HoR’s statements on Gaza. It is not possible for the eastern government to unilaterally halt oil exports without launching Libya into another civil war. While the east has the capability to physically intervene in oil production and export terminals, Libya’s oil revenues are more nominally controlled by the western government. Libyan and Turkish estimates are that some 8,000 people have been killed so far in the conflict, over 6,500 of them Palestinians.

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Italian engineering and construction firm Rosetti Marino said Tuesday it had won a contract with the Italian energy industry services firm Saipem for offshore EPC activities in the Mediterranean Sea off Libya worth over 300 million euros. Saipem awarded the project to Rosetti Marino under an Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) contract for the construction of a Gas Recovery Module (GRM) of approximately 5,000 tonnes to be installed on the DP4 offshore structure off the coast of Libya. The project’s end user is Mellitah Oil & Gas B.V. Libya Branch, a consortium consisting of the National Oil Corporation of Libya and Eni North Africa. The scope of work of the project awarded to Rosetti Marino includes engineering, material procurement, construction, and load-out (EPC) works for the delivery of the GRM, as well as activities to modify the DP4 platform so that it can receive gas from the GRM and the refurbishment of the platform's accommodation module. The activities will start immediately and are expected to be completed in early 2026.

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The Libyan Iron and Steel Company (LISCO) announced last Thursday that it is exporting 9,000 tons of hot-briquet iron (HBI) on the ship Joy Express destined for Egypt. On the other hand, it also announced on the same day that unloading operations continue for the ship Successor, which is carrying 151,000 tons of iron ore.LISCO said this steady and continuous movement witnessed by its port between export and import, confirms the position of the company and its products on the global level.

The General Authority for Search and Identification of Missing Persons announced that its teams had exhumed 225 bodies of floods victims from the Al-Dhahr Al-Hamar cemetery in Derna. The Authority explained in a statement that this effort was authorized by the Public Prosecutor’s Office to take DNA samples from the exhumed bodies, saying that reference samples were taken from 180 bodies that were exhumed from the city’s Dhahr Al-Hamar cemetery. The Authority also explained that it had buried 81 bodies in Daniel Storm Shuhadaa cemetery in the Al-Fatayeh cemetery in the city of Derna after completing legal aspects. It said that the total number of bodies had not yet been determined, highlighting the possibility of accurately identifying the number after exhuming all the bodies. The number of open files reached 632, with 450 DNA samples taken from the families of the victims, which will be referred to laboratories for genetic analysis and placed in the Authority's database.