Azzopardi Fisheries, Malta’s main player in the island’s multi-million tuna industry, has won a landmark case against the European Commission opening the doors for millions of euros in possible compensation from Brussels.

According to a judgement delivered this morning in Luxembourg by the European Court of Justice (ECJ), the European Commission had discriminated against the Maltese company – AJD Tuna (part of Azzopardi Fisheries) - when in 2008 it issued a regulation ordering it to stop fishing by purse seiners for tuna. It had also blocked the importation of fish to its offshore cages while allowing Spanish fishermen to continue with the same activity for another week.

The case goes back to June 2008 when the Commission adopted a regulation which prohibited purse seiners flying the flag of Malta, Greece, France, Italy and Cyprus from fishing for bluefin tuna in the Eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean from 16 June 2008, and purse seiners flying the Spanish flag from 23 June 2008. The regulation also prohibited Community operators from accepting landings, the placing in cages for fattening or farming, or transhipments in Community waters or ports of bluefin tuna caught by seiners in those zones from the same dates.

Malta’s AJD Tuna - which owns two fish farms for the farming and fattening of bluefin tuna in Malta - immediately institutedlegal proceedings against the Maltese Director of Fisheries and the European Commission seeking compensation for damages it claimed to have suffered as a result of this prohibition. AJD Tuna also claimed that it was unable to acquire the quantity of bluefin tuna which it had agreed to buy from French and Italian fishermen before the opening of the fishing season.

The ECJ, this morning upheld ADJ’s claims stating that “the regulation is invalid in so far as it treats Spanish purse seiners differently from other (Maltese) purse seiners without such difference in treatment being objectively justified in view of the objective pursued, which was the protection of the bluefin tuna stock.

ECJ sources told timesofmalta.com that this judgement is now expected to open compensation claims from the other fishermen involved including Maltese, Italian, Greek, French and Cypriot fishermen.