Former European Commissioner Tonio Borg has been promoted to full professor following a two-year saga that included a complaint filed with the ombudsman.
Borg - then associate professor at the University of Malta within the Public Law Department at the University’s Faculty of Laws - applied for the post of full professor in October 2022.
He became assistant lecturer in September 2016 and was promoted to senior lecturer in February 2019, before moving on to associate professor in March 2020.
His application for promotion was turned down by the promotions board as he had not spent eight years as a senior lecturer or associate professor in terms of the collective agreement for university academic staff.
However, according to the same agreement, the time criterion may be partially compensated for by the applicant’s “contribution to University leadership roles, contribution to culture, the economy and society at large”.
In August of last year, the Ombudsman's Commissioner for Education ruled that the promotions board’s refusal to consider the “compensatory criteria” was arbitrary and gave rise to unreasonableness.
He had recommended that the promotions board was to be newly composed to assess Borg’s application and “that specific consideration should be given to the compensatory criteria being invoked by the applicant".
But the university refused to comply with the commissioner’s recommendation, contending that it had acted correctly.
When Borg sought judicial review before the courts of justice, the First Hall of the Civil Court in March of this year quashed the university's decision, declaring it amounted to an abuse of power.
Although the university appealed that decision, the appeal was abandoned.
On Wednesday, the Office of the Ombudsman said that a new board had considered Borg's application, and the opinion of two independent peer reviewers appointed by the Association of Commonwealth Universities was also sought.
Last month, Borg was informed that the University Council had ratified the recommendation of the promotions board and he was being promoted to full professor with effect from October 24, 2022.