House ends debate on bill aligning 19 laws to EU requirements

The House of Representatives on Tuesday gave a second reading to a wide-ranging bill which aligns 19 laws to the acquis of the European Union.

The amendments involved, among others, the Commercial Code, the Supplies and Services Act, the Civil Aviation Act, the Cargo Clearance and Transport Act, the Exchange Control Act and the Immovable Property (Acquisition by Non-Residents) Act.

Mr Edwin Vassallo, parliamentary secretary in the Ministry of Finance, said the amendments would enable the Maltese to operate in the wider EU context and he was confident they would make a success of it.

Dr Charles Mangion, deputy leader of the opposition, referred to the amendments to the Civil Aviation Act. He observed that air services were to be liberalised, but the chairman of Air Malta had said that the airline was not ready for privatisation.

The airline had been set up to meet national needs and it was therefore important to discuss the future of this pillar of the tourism industry. How would membership of the EU affect Air Malta?

Any foreign airline would now be able to compete against the national airline and be able to sustain losses for a certain length of time. Without erecting any barriers Malta should safeguard its very successful flag carrier.

Malta should be wary of going from protecting its airline to allowing foreign monopolisation of the civil aviation sector. Liberalisation would render the government impotent in checking any ill-advised decision by the industry.

Turning to cargo clearance, he said the system developed locally was not unique because there were parallels to it overseas. It was important to see how the sector would be affected by any changes being considered. The House should be made aware of the progress of any talks between the government and the sector.

Concluding, Dr Mangion referred to the amendment to the law on the purchase of property by foreigners and insisted that great care should be taken to counter the rise in property prices, especially as they affected young couples.

Dr Stefan Buontempo (MLP), continuing on the same theme, said the minimum value of property bought by foreigners should be raised, not least to protect the interests of young couples who would increasingly see properties becoming unaffordable.

Prices of Lm30,000 and Lm35,000 were the same as Maltese families were already paying to buy their own homes. Compared with average asking prices for various sizes of properties in different parts of Malta for purchase by foreigners, this meant that there was no real difference with what the Maltese were expecting to pay.

Property prices in Malta for the Maltese had already shot up, almost doubling, over the past 10 years. The thresholds of prices for property purchased by foreigners from next year should be raised.

Competition, in fact, was already on because promises of sale (konvenji) were already being drawn up.

The situation would be exacerbated when foreigners would be able to buy second and third properties for any reason without any thresholds.

Maltese families would find themselves in difficulty not only in the outright purchase of properties, but also for renting.

All this would impact on other aspects of Maltese life, such as cost of living and wages, concluded Dr Buontempo.

Mr Robert Arrigo (PN) said that since Europe would be one market, he was afraid Air Malta would be prone to putting more emphasis on high-yielding routes such as London and Frankfurt.

It could well be that Air Malta would be better advised to emulate low-fare carriers, which were known to be making good profits.

The Department of Civil Aviation should be quicker in deciding on foreign airlines' requests for permission to fly passengers to Malta. Alacrity of reaction could well mean the difference between attracting business and losing it, said Mr Arrigo.

Dr Gavin Gulia, opposition spokesman on home affairs, said amendments to the Patents Act could alienate investment that had already been made in Malta.

The underlying rule was that the patent holder was the only entity that could use a patented invention, but there were also cases in which the holder could not impede other entities from using his invention. This was the case in the testing of, or experimentation with, generic medicine with properties similar to the patented medicine.

This exemption, especially in medical areas, had brought to Malta various enterprises because the current Patent Act allowed them to export their Malta products, in the process employing several Maltese. In the bill under debate there was the possibility of such exporters finding themselves at risk.

Turning to the amendment to the Extradition Act, Dr Gulia said there could be some particular act that Malta did not view as criminal but simply anti-moral. There were crimes contemplated in foreign countries that were not viewed as crimes in Malta, or vice-versa. In such cases, what was not viewed as a crime in Malta was not an extraditable offence, but this would cease to be the case when Malta adopted EU laws.

Dr Michael Farrugia, opposition spokesman on health, said the proposed raising of the minimum age for the purchase of tobacco products from 16 to 18 could not be expected to solve the smoking problem. Various surveys had shown that the anti-smoking campaigns were not getting the message across. Women, in particular, were smoking more and many children were started to smoke when relatively young. This pointed to a shortcoming in the educational system.

The bill, which would ban tobacco sponsorships of sporting events, should be more specific as to what constituted a sporting event or facility where tobacco products could not be sold.

Mr Carmelo Abela (MLP) said he was getting the impression that a number of amendments were being proposed half-heartedly. As a case in point, the advertising of tobacco products was being banned - unless there were mitigating factors.

It was evident that the repeated raising of prices of tobacco products was not being effective in discouraging smoking, but at least part of the revenues from these taxes should be spent on greater educational efforts. Ways should be found to reduce children's access to tobacco, not only from shops but also from vending machines.

On the proposed amendments to the Telecommunications Act, Mr Abela said it should be clarified why non-tobacco-related advertising as a backdrop to interviews was not currently being allowed.

Winding up the debate, Parliamentary Secretary Edwin Vassallo referred to remarks by Labour MP Evarist Bartolo and denied that parliament could be reduced to being a rubber stamp of EU directives, since such directives would henceforth be discussed when they were still in draft from.

Mr Vassallo said the main purpose of the amendments contained in this bill was to simplify procedures, particularly in the commercial sector.

For example, the law on commercial agents was being modernised.

Before the election, Mr Vassallo said, many had expressed concern that foreigners could come to work here, even in the commercial sector. But the laws had now been improved so that licences were required in all sectors.

In the end, however, it would be up to the Maltese to decide whether they wanted to seek the services of foreigners in preference to the Maltese.

Mr Vassallo said that after September the government planned to hold meetings with the various sectors affected by the amendments so their implications could be explained to them.

He observed that the Supplies and Services Act was being amended so that the price order mechanism was being practically consigned to history with no controls on profit margins. Clearly it was the market which should by the regulatory factor. Indeed, competition was leading to a wider choice of products at cheaper prices.

Price orders would henceforth only be imposed in extraordinary circumstances such as product shortages, and they would be limited to six months.

Mr Vassallo said the Maltese would now be working in a new environment. Malta's internal market would incorporate all of the EU, and he was confident that the Maltese would be able to work in the new environment and make a success of it.

The bill was then given a second reading.