A bottle of wine goes through many steps before it reaches the glass. Starting from the grape, it is monitored, barrelled, bottled, registered, regulated, stored, moved, and sold. At each stage, people rely on trust instead of checking every detail. This can lead to issues such as counterfeit bottles, lost records, and questions from buyers about the wine’s origin. The main challenge is making wine traceable without adding cost or slowing down the process. Prof. Joshua Ellul and Prof. Gordon Pace at the University of Malta, and their team, are working on this problem.
Looking for a fun and exciting activity fitting for children and grown-ups alike? Science in the City offers inspiring activities throughout the whole month of September. And, between the 26th and 27th, Science in the City hosts the Street Festival and the Performance Festival.
Malta is launching its first ocean observatory system, a floating collection of instruments designed to monitor every aspect of the Mediterranean. Dr Adam Gauci is a lecturer at the Department of Geosciences at the University of Malta and has years of experience in oceanographic data science. He sat down with Colan MacKenzie to discuss the trials and tribulations of turning this idea into reality and the future role this observatory will play in combating climate change.
Advances in technology and study offer improvements to the practice of interpreting, as evidenced by the recent installation of new interpreting equipment at UM’s Interpreters’ Lab, overseen by Dr Amy Colman. Her mission, however, is much broader as she seeks to share the story of interpreting itself as a practice with a long history.
The taxes of every citizen in the European Union (EU) contribute to the EU’s immense budget, and measures are needed to ensure these funds are used properly. Benjamin Charles Cassar talks to Prof. Ivan Sammut and Dr Jelena Agranovska, who are studying the effectiveness of such measures at a national level.
The EU’s Institutions operate throughout the continent on a massive scale, and in the 51 years since its conception, the scope of the EU has expanded to affect each and every one of our daily lives. The world would be very different without the Union.
But this progress has not been without its hiccups. As Brexit’s deadline creeps closer, other countries, such as Hungary and Poland are experiencing political turbulence and rising Euroscepticism. Come the European Elections in May, these issues will bare their teeth.
Despite this, the EU has had momentous victories in its pursuit of continental integration. Take, for example, the Common Market allowing for easy trade, the Schengen jurisdiction that simplifies travel, and the much-lauded mandate for free data roaming. The EU has also been moving towards harmonising its efforts to protect its financial interests.
Prof. Ivan Sammut and Dr Jelena Agranovska
In view of this, over the past few months, Prof. Ivan Sammut and Dr Jelena Agranovska (Faculty of Laws, University of Malta) have been leading the Hercule Project, a comparative study that looks into the implementation and enforcement of European Criminal Law. Together, they are investigating the development of legislation, focusing on the recent PIF (Protection of the Union’s Financial Interests) Directive. The aim is to increase people’s confidence in EU institutions and ensure that funds are managed transparently and appropriately.
Apart from the legislative side, the study will also look into the bodies that work to protect the EU’s (and thus all its citizens’) financial interests—namely the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), and Europol.
To this end, Sammut and Agranovska selected 12 countries based on their size, geography, and legal system to gauge each state’s reception of European legislation. These countries include Germany and Malta, among a number of others.
Each country report is being handled and written up by a local expert, with the team at the University of Malta offering guidelines and template questions. However, in practice, each team is given free reign on how to conduct their studies, as long as they stay true to purpose.
Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with Sammut and Agranovska. They offered insight into its reasoning as well as the practical implications for citizens uninitiated in the intricacies of European law—myself included.
‘It affects everyone at the end of the day,’ Sammut notes. With blockchain and cryptocurrencies rapidly gaining interest, financial and IT crime protection are becoming more relevant to everyday life. ‘However, many times member states are only concerned when there is fraud with their own sources,’ Sammut continues. The PIF Directive will fit into existing national legal systems and balance out the field.
The project so far has revealed discrepancies in the uptake of legislation between Member States. Unsurprisingly, Sammut is quick to point out Germany as being at the forefront of implementation. Indeed, Angela Merkel is very proactive in most EU-level discussions. However, states such as Lithuania continue to lag behind, with standards seemingly lower than the rest of Europe. The election cycle can also complicate matters, as is the case with Poland. Initially eager to be part of EPPO, since their elections, this has become increasingly unlikely, with the Law and Justice Party consistently at odds with the European Union.
Diving deep into the implications for each state is impossible. However, the team noted these differences in implementation during a one-day workshop held in Valletta in October, when rapporteurs from each of the 12 participating countries came together to discuss their findings thus far.
Dr Stefano Filletti, Malta’s rapporteur in the study, points out the issue with parallel administrative and criminal investigations. As things stand now, OLAF begins an administrative investigation, passes on the information to the Attorney General’s office, who in turn prompts the Maltese Police Force to begin its own investigation. This criminal investigation works independently of the previous administrative investigation, disregarding its findings and starting anew. The problem is efficiency. The two investigations should be synthesised, working in tandem, particularly because when investigating activities with a financial interest, speed is key. Dual investigations work against this goal. Filletti notes that while the PIF Directive should keep this goal at heart, it instead focuses on the definitions of offences, while remaining ‘completely silent’ on recovery.
Filletti notes the language barrier as one obstacle. For example, the Italian term sparizione dei soldi literally translates to ‘disappearance of funds’. However, this does not correlate to any Maltese law. So should we consider it as related to fraud? Or perhaps misappropriation?
Prof. Jaan Ginter of Estonia echoes Filletti’s concerns on dual administrative and criminal investigations, raising the issue of non bis in idem, or double jeopardy. This relates to the concept that a person should not be tried twice for the same crime, which the PIF directive seemingly ignores, allowing for concurrent administrative and criminal proceedings.
Harmonisation of penalties is also a concern for Ginter, as in some Member States (particularly Eastern members) a €1,000 penalty would be deemed steep, while others, such as Germany or Luxembourg, would see it as negligible.
In France, Dr Araceli Turmo notes that while politicians, judges and practitioners are approaching the legislation positively, a multitude of agencies need to show a more coordinated effort.
Agranovksa, serving a dual role as Latvia’s rapporteur, expects PIF Directive implementation to go smoothly, as many of its provisions are already in place. However, money laundering remains rife in the country, with the accusation this year that ABLV, Latvia’s third largest bank, has been perpetrating large-scale money laundering. Following the scandal, a law was urgently implemented outlawing shell companies. Further implementations will follow, and they are unlikely to encounter much opposition.
The general consensus remains that most national legal systems are not adequately prepared to take on European Law. However, this is partly why this study is taking place—to give states the tools they need to equip themselves.
Sammut, Agranovska and their European counterparts have barely scratched the surface, and the implications of their work will certainly go far in understanding the limitations of the EU’s Member States. While the EU is faced with the immeasurable task of legislating for an incredibly diverse membership, it cannot continue going from strength to strength without considering this reality. Member states are not on a level playing field, and everyone needs to work together to adapt to this reality.
Note: In June 2019, Sammut and Agranovska will be discussing the implications and scope of the study at a conference entitled
EU & national criminal law in Fraud, Corruption, Blockchains: friends or foes? For more information, email Elisa Attard on elisa.attard@um.edu.mt.
Curbing extremism and violence is high on the global agenda. With prisons known to be a breeding ground for recruiters, are we doing enough to protect our inmates? Michela Scalpello writes.
Life is hard sometimes. Juggling the demands of work with family while remaining healthy and sane can be tough. Done successfully, that lifestyle can look like a carefully choreographed dance. Add a bout of the flu to the mix though, and the dance gets thrown off. Now you find yourself strewn on the dance floor, with hurdles coming your way.
So far, mothers in our societies have carried the lion’s share of caring responsibilities and bear the Motherhood Penalty, affecting their earnings and career progression, amongst many other things. The International Labour Organisation claims that closing the gender gap in caring responsibilities between women and men is a priority for social development in the 21st Century.
The European Union (EU) is proposing a series of measures which aims to do exactly that. The first tackles paternity leave. At the time of writing, men in Malta are allowed at most two days off from work when they become parents. Under the new scheme, fathers will be able to take at least 10 working days of paid paternity leave around the birth of their child. When it comes to parental leave, a non-transferable quota of four months will be reserved for each parent to take, up until the child is 12 years old. It should be noted that 90% of fathers across the EU do not make use of parental leave at present. Finally, there is caring leave for workers who care for seriously ill or dependent relatives. These people will be entitled to five additional days of paid leave.
Whilst these three initiatives make sense, when analysed through the gender lens, the reality is that when people make use of these measures, they will not be compensated in full, but at the replacement rate of compulsory sick pay level. This immediately sets off the alarm bells.
Taking parental leave could mean a reduction of around 80% in income. Are Maltese parents, especially fathers, willing to accept such a drastic pay cut with every new child that arrives, along with a spike in costs? The result will be that fathers are likely to shun this additional leave, while mothers may be more prone to take the extra leave at the reduced pay rate. This will simply reinforce gender roles and gender stereotypes.
The aspect of this law that equates parental and caring leave to sick leave has to be removed. Parents manoeuvring through the fast lane of life and trying to care for their children by taking paternity, parental, or caring leave are not sick, so why pay them as such? Why impose a parental penalty on parents who are bringing up the next generation of citizens? The EU needs to do some serious rethinking if it really wants to contribute to the most significant social development of the 21st century.
The term ‘robot’ tends to conjure up images ofwell-known metal characters like C-3P0, R2-D2, and WALL-E. The robotics research boom has in the end enabled the introduction of real robots into our homes, workspaces, and recreational places. The pop culture icons we loved have now been replaced with the likes of robot vacuums such as the Roomba and home-automated systems for smoke detectors, or WIFI-enabled thermostats, such as the Nest. Nonetheless, building a fully autonomous mobile robot is still a momentous task. In order to purposefully travel around its environment, a mobile robot has to answer the questions ‘where am I?’, ‘where should I go next?’ and ‘how am I going to get there?’
Like humans, mobile robots must have some awareness of their surroundings in order to carry out tasks autonomously. A map comes in handy for humans. A robot could build the map itself while exploring an unknown environment—this is a process called Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM). For the robot to decide which location to explore next, however, an exploration strategy would need to be devised, and the path planner would guide the robot to navigate to the next location, which increases the map’s size.
Rachael N. Darmanin
Rachael Darmanin (supervised by Dr Ing. Marvin Bugeja), used a software framework called Robot Operating System (ROS) to develop a robot system that can explore and map an unknown environment on its own. Darmanin used a differential-drive-wheeled mobile robot, dubbed PowerBot, equipped with a laser scanner (LIDAR) and wheel encoders. The algorithms responsible for localising the robot analyse the sensors’ data and construct the map. In her experiments, Darmanin implemented two different exploration strategies, the Nearest Frontier and the Next Best View, on the same system to map the Control Systems Engineering Laboratory. Each experiment ran for approximately two minutes until the robot finished its exploration and produced a map of its surroundings. This was then compared to a map of the environment to evaluate the robot’s mapping accuracy. The Next Best View approach generated the most accurate maps.
Mobile robots with autonomous exploration and mapping capabilities have massive relevance to society. They can aid hazardous exploration, like nuclear disasters, or access uncharted archaeological sites. They could also help in search and rescue operations where they would be used to navigate in disaster-stricken environments. For her doctorate, Darmanin is now looking into how multiple robots can work together to survey a large area—with a few other solutions in between.
This research was carried out as part of a Master of Science in Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Malta. It was funded by the Master it! Scholarship Scheme (Malta). This scholarship is part-financed by the European Union European Social Fund (ESF) under Operational Programme II Cohesion Policy 2007–2013, Empowering People for More Jobs and a Better Quality Of Life.
Malta has a target: by 2020, 10% of the generation of energy should come from the renewables. Luckily, there is a resource which is available almost every third hour a year—sunshine. Dr Ing. Maurice Apap and Ing. Jurgen Bonavia explain how the solar energy can be harvested. Words by Tuovi Mäkipere.
