Summary
Comino is formally part of Għajnsielem, but the island has become the national case study of carrying-capacity failure: sunbed and deckchair sprawl at the Blue Lagoon, illegal kiosks, a contested booking system, the approved Six Senses resort at Santa Marija Bay, and sustained Moviment Graffitti / BirdLife legal action. Comino is a Natura 2000 site that hosts internationally important Yelkouan Shearwater and European Storm-petrel colonies.
Timeline
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2025-11
The Environment and Planning Review Tribunal rejected the joint appeal by nine environmental NGOs against the Six Senses Comino project - the €170 million, 140-bed luxury resort at Santa Marija Bay with 16 standalone bungalows. Graffitti vowed the fight would continue.
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2025-06
Graffitti reported that the Blue Lagoon remained 'choked' because no enforcement system was in place to uphold the 4,000-visitor cap.
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2025-05-15
Court ruling (Judge Miriam Hayman) cleared the booking system to resume after ferry operators filed - and lost - a prohibitory injunction.
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2025-05-01
Online booking system launched, capping Blue Lagoon visitors at 4,000 at a time across three daily slots (8-13, 13:30-17:30, 18-22). 4,800 visitors used the system on day one; suspended days later pending court review.
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2025-04
Planning Authority approved the Six Senses Comino project 8-1, despite strong NGO objections citing the absence of waste, sewage and carrying-capacity assessments on a Natura 2000 site.
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2024-10-16
Court ordered the Lands Authority to publish every land concession granted on Comino, after a Moviment Graffitti Freedom of Information request.
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2023-05
Authorities enforced a 65% reduction of the deckchair/sunbed footprint at the Blue Lagoon, following sustained pressure from Moviment Graffitti direct actions.
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2022-06
Moviment Graffitti activists cleared out deckchairs at the Blue Lagoon in a high-profile direct action, reclaiming the public beach and forcing the issue of unauthorised commercial occupation into national debate.
Context
Comino is roughly 3.5 km² and formally uninhabited except for the Comino Hotel grounds and a handful of resident staff. At summer peak, the Blue Lagoon has drawn up to 12,000 visitors in a single day - roughly 3,500 per hectare of shoreline. The island is a Natura 2000 Special Area of Conservation and a Special Protection Area for birds, hosting nesting Yelkouan Shearwater, European Storm-petrel and Scopoli's Shearwater colonies. BirdLife Malta has documented light-pollution and boat-noise impacts on nesting success. Rat predation, linked to visitor food waste, remains the single largest threat to breeding seabirds on the island.
Articles
PN MP asks Ombudsman to investigate emergency Comino works
April 2021
In April 2021, PN MP Robert Cutajar asked the Ombudsman to investigate emergency works carried out on the service culvert along the dirt road leading to the Blue Lagoon. The works, undertaken between February and March 2021, proceeded without a Planning Authority permit. Cutajar argued that the "emergency" framing was being used to bypass scrutiny on a Natura 2000 site, and that the precedent would be dangerous if left unchallenged. The episode became one of the earliest public tests of how procedural shortcuts could erode the island's protected status.
Source: Lovin Malta, April 2021.
Planning Authority case officers recommend approval for Six Senses Comino
4 April 2025
On 4 April 2025, the Planning Authority's case officers issued a recommendation to approve HV Hospitality's Six Senses Comino application. The proposal covers Santa Marija Bay and San Niklaw Bay: the hotel footprint would expand by 2,360 square metres of gross floor area, the existing 9 bungalows would grow to 16, and total capacity would sit at 140 beds. Guest capacity on paper was revised down from 284 to 240, and the developer would pay €307,625 into the planning fund. Thousands of objections had already been filed against the application by the date of the report.
Source: Newsbook, 4 April 2025.
Graffitti releases Ibiza activist testimonies ahead of PA vote
17 April 2025
On 17 April 2025, Moviment Graffitti published a video in which activists from Ibiza described what Six Senses and similar luxury operators had done to that island's ecology and residential communities. The release was timed for the week before the Planning Authority was due to vote on the Comino application, scheduled for Thursday 24 April 2025. Graffitti restated that no carrying-capacity assessment had been carried out, and that the PA was being asked to approve a resort on a Natura 2000 site without the baseline ecological figures that any honest decision would require.
Source: Moviment Graffitti, 17 April 2025.
Editorial: Blue Lagoon cap arrives years too late
3 May 2025
In an editorial on 3 May 2025, The Malta Independent on Sunday examined the freshly introduced visitor cap of 4,000 at a time at the Blue Lagoon, spread across three daily slots (8-13, 13:30-17:30, 18-22). Tour-boat day-tripper numbers had also been pushed down from 10,000 to 5,000 under Minister Ian Borg. The editorial argued that the cap was welcome in principle but too late in practice: years of unrestricted access had already normalised the scale of damage, and an online booking queue could not repair seabird disturbance, sewage leakage or sunbed sprawl that had been allowed to become the baseline.
Source: The Malta Independent on Sunday editorial, 3 May 2025.
Ten NGOs crowdfund €20,000 legal challenge against Six Senses
23 May 2025
On 23 May 2025, ten environmental NGOs operating as the "Together for Comino" coalition announced a crowdfunding target of €20,000 to bring a legal challenge against the Planning Authority's approval of the 140-bed hotel, 16 villas and 44 pools on Santa Marija Bay and San Niklaw Bay. In the coalition's words: "If this decision is not overturned, Comino as we know it will be lost forever." The filing was framed not as a symbolic protest but as a test case of whether Natura 2000 protections could be enforced at all against state-backed tourism development.
Source: Malta Today, Nicole Meilak, 23 May 2025.
MTA delays promised tender for Blue Lagoon kiosks
8 February 2026
On 8 February 2026, The Shift News reported that the Malta Tourism Authority had delayed the long-promised competitive tender for the Blue Lagoon's kiosks and beach concessions, meaning the 2026 summer season would again run under the incumbent operators - Daniel Refalo and Mark Cutajar, the latter the brother of former Labour MEP Josianne Cutajar. The kiosks have operated without a valid concession since at least 2015. The Shift noted the continuing paradox of Malta's most biodiverse Natura 2000 site being commercially occupied under informal, repeatedly-renewed arrangements rather than a transparent tender.
Source: The Shift News, Ivan Camilleri, 8 February 2026.
Nine NGOs warn over Noma Island off Comino
6 March 2026
On 6 March 2026, nine environmental NGOs warned that a 1,750-square-metre motorised trimaran branded as "Noma Island" was being marketed as Malta's "fourth island" and anchored in waters off Comino. The vessel is a rebranded version of "Canua Island", which had been expelled from France's Côte d'Azur for ecological and regulatory reasons. The NGOs argued that the platform functioned as a floating resort extension of the pressure already built up around Comino, bypassing planning law by operating offshore while still placing its daily load squarely inside the Natura 2000 site around the island.
Source: Newsbook, 6 March 2026.