MEPs requested to assist the Maltese mom who has been on little one help for ten years

Peter Agius has asked MEPs to help a Maltese mother in her 10-year struggle to get child support payments from her children’s father.

The woman, whose name is Agius to protect her identity, was married and had two children before she and her husband separated in 2009. A Maltese court sentenced her husband to monthly maintenance payments of 1,100 euros.

He eventually moved to France and settled there, but the payments never came, the woman says.

Despite a 10-year struggle to get the Maltese and French authorities to enforce the court ruling, it has so far failed.

PN spokesman and MP candidate Agius has now stepped in to urge MPs to legislate to ensure such court decisions are enforced across EU borders.

“She is groping in the dark with no explanations as to the reasons for the intolerable delay or the actual state of play regarding the fulfillment of her rights,” Agius told MEPs in the petition, which he submitted to the European Parliament’s Petitions Committee on Monday.

“Europe is first and foremost about civil rights. If we don’t give a citizen his rights, Europe fails. In many cases, this system offers solutions. However, there are many other instances where it fails miserably. We should do it. Don’t accept piecemeal success.”

Agius told MPs that the woman “sought the help of the European system of recognition of sentences to enforce the alimony order in France years ago for his execution in France, but to her knowledge it never took place.”

Agius says the woman never received an explanation for not enforcing the court order.

As a result, she was forced “to raise her children in desperation from her own resources while they progressed from toddlers to teenagers, without the due support of alimony decided by the Maltese court”.

He urged MEPs to “remove the bottlenecks and ensure that every case is treated as a priority” so that no European citizen has to go through such a situation.

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