EU energy ministers are pushing for public funding to help build a gas pipeline to a power station in Malta co-owned by businessman awaiting trial for murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galicia.

On Tuesday, officials and MEPs will begin deciding on new rules aimed at them phasing out EU subsidies for fossil fuel projects.

However, on Friday EU ambassadors confirmed that Malta and Cyprus had obtained exemptions for pipelines connecting them to European gas networks.

In practice, this means that the € 400m (£ 340m) Melita pipeline project, designed to transport gas from Gela in Sicily to Delimara in Malta, could be built with EU funding.

Cyprus should also benefit from an exemption for the phasing out of EU support for fossil fuel infrastructure. The € 7 billion EastMed pipeline is an even bigger effort than the Malta-Italy connection – it will join Cyprus in the European gas network along with Greece and Israel.

This move has been criticized by environmentalists as it will link Malta’s dependence on the Delimara gas-fired power station, which is partly owned by the man accused of murder of Caruana Galizia.

The Maltese businessman Yorgen Fenech was previously a director of ElectroGas, the company that operates the Delimara power station, and together with his family he plays a key role in the company. This year he was charged with conspiracy to assassinate Caruana Galizia. Maltese prosecutors recommended life sentence, and is due for bring the process. Fenech denies he had any part in the murder.

Prior to his arrest, he was chief executive of his family’s business, the Tumas Group, which teamed up with other Maltese families to secure a third of the shares in ElectroGas. He owns shares in the holding through Thomas and through a separate company. His uncle and Thomas chairman Raymond Fenech said he was unaware of the EU’s proposals.

“Yorgen Fenech is a minority shareholder in Tumas Group that owns less than 4% of the company’s shares that have been devolved through inheritance,” he added.

Caruana Galizia was investigating the award of the Delimara power station contract to ElectroGas when she died in a car bomb in 2017. The Maltese police said that they believe she was killed because of her reporting on the power station.

Barnaby Pace, a gas campaigner at the corruption and environmental organization Global Witness, said: “This pipeline threatens to block Malta from using polluting fossil fuels and dealing with this fossil gas project, linked to the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, for decades. . The EU needs to put the interests of Maltese and EU citizens before the profits of the big polluters and refuse to be involved in another fossil fuel deal. “

ElectroGas argues that the gas-fired power station marked an environmental improvement when it opened in 2017 because it replaced a plant that runs on heavy fuel oil, which pollutes even more than gas. Malta is also supplied with electricity from an interconnector that connects it to Sicily.

Delimara is currently operating using liquefied natural gas, which is shipped. Together with the interconnector for Sicily, it meets many of the country’s energy needs. Only about 7% of electricity in Malta is generated from renewable sources, one of the lowest rates in the EU.

An EU official said that Malta had the support of other EU ambassadors when the exemption was secured on Friday. “Several delegations spoke explicitly in favor of maintaining the derogation,” the official said.

A group of 11 countries, including Ireland, Germany and the Netherlands, had originally lobbied to exclude existing fossil fuel projects from support. But Cyprus and Malta, supported by most Eastern European delegations, were able to point to a 10-year-old European Council conclusion that “no EU member state should remain isolated from the networks. European gas and electricity markets after 2015 ”.