Malta has no intention of reopening negotiations with Brussels on its carbon emission allocations despite a ruling by the European Court of Justice against the European Commission.
The Commission was taken to the ECJ by some member states, including Poland and Estonia, after it took a decision in 2006 to revise downwards all the carbon emission National Allocation Plans (NAPs) submitted by its new member states.
In dealing with the first two cases on the issue, the ECJ decided in favour of Poland and Estonia stating that the Commission had "exceeded the limits of its power" when it rejected the national carbon emission reduction plans of the two member states.
Bulgaria, Romania, Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia and Lithuania have also instituted similar court proceedings and the ECJ is now also expected to decide in their favour.
Malta had also objected to the revision of its National Allocation Plan and had said that it was considering following the other EU member states and going to court over the issue. However, its threat never materialised and the island ended up accepting the 30 per cent cut decided by Brussels.
Three years down the line, Malta has expressed no regrets and is now saying that it is satisfied with its allocations, even though they are 800,000 tonnes less annually than it had originally asked for.
A government spokesman said: "During 2007 (at the time of the decision), Malta had bilateral meetings with the Commission to clarify technical issues relating to the methodologies used by the Commission when they reviewed the National Allocation Plan (NAP) for 2008 -2012 as submitted by Malta.
"The results of the bilateral meetings were that Malta accepted the methodology used by the Commission and submitted a revised National Allocation Plan which was agreed by both parties. It should also be noted that the resultant allocation was deemed sufficient to meet our requirements. In fact, at the end of 2008, Malta did not utilise its full allocation as laid down in the NAP."
In submitting its plan under the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), Malta had asked for a total allocation of 2.9 million annual emission allocation until 2012 and had objected formally to the EU executive's decision to review Malta's plan and slash its emissions to just 2.1 million tonnes annually.
At the time, Malta had argued that this cut "could severely reduce the island's economic growth". But, probably due to the economic recession, energy demand remained constant, enabling both Enemalta's installations at Marsa and Delimara to stay within the limit.
As from 2013, following a revision of the EU's ETS scheme, member states will no longer have a country specific cap for their carbon emissions from installations falling under the scope of the scheme.
For land-based installations, the two power stations in Malta's case, NAPs will be replaced by a single EU-wide allocation process.
This will mean that Malta will have to continue to drastically cut its emissions. By 2020, the island will have to have reduce emissions by five per cent compared with 1990 levels.