A report based on the EU anti-racism commission’s recommendations to Malta to collect detailed data on racist hate crimes and create a permanent residence plan for irregular migrants concluded they were partially implemented. The fifth update on the report, published earlier on Tuesday, is based on two recommendations that propose in-depth hate crime tracking and a permanent residence plan for migrants on long-term stays. The anti-racism commission concluded Malta’s government “fully implemented” the hate crime proposal but failed to implement the permanent residence plan suggestion. The European commission against racism and intolerance (ECRI) had previously proposed that the Maltese government should collect data on hate crime incidents that includes the motivation for the crime and the criminal justice system’s response. As for its second recommendation, the ECRI had “strongly” suggested that authorities continue allowing persons who cannot be returned to their country of origin to stay in Malta legally. The ECRI also urged the Maltese government to consider a more permanent form of regularisation for people who have stayed in Malta for more than ten years. ‘No plan of...