John Dalli leaving the European Court of Justice with his daughter yesterday. Photo: Mark Micallef

A defiant John Dalli was left unimpressed with José Manuel Barroso’s performance at the European Court of Justice, saying his ex-boss at the European Commission had “raised no issue” related to the allegations against him.

“He kept insisting on the resignation (that Mr Dalli had resigned as European Commissioner voluntarily) but that is it, because he knows that the basis of the (EU anti-fraud agency) OLAF report is a fraud,” Mr Dalli said.

He had just emerged from the last, three-hour hearing at the court in Luxembourg, where a panel of five judges listened to the final pleas in the case of unfair dismissal instituted by Mr Dalli against Mr Barroso, the President of the European Commission.

Mr Dalli wants the court to dec-lare his “sacking” illegal and award symbolic compensation of €1.

Yesterday Mr Barroso’s lawyers presented a number of arguments in defence of the President’s actions.

The day before, the judges had heard both Mr Dalli and Mr Barroso give evidence, followed by some of their top aides.

Mostly, they described in detail the chronology of events on the day Mr Dalli stepped down on October 16, 2012 after an OLAF investigation concluded he was aware his former canvasser Silvio Zammit had asked for a bribe from tobacco lobbyists in his name and did nothing about it.

European Commission president José Manuel Barroso. Photo: Reuters

In his testimony on Monday, Mr Barroso rejected Mr Dalli’s claim he was sacked, emphasising that during their 90-minute meeting, Mr Dalli unequivocally accepted to step down to clear his name.

But Mr Barroso, who has been rather sparse in his reactions to a series of damning claims by Mr Dalli, also went on the offensive on those allegations, dismissing them as an attempt to muddy the waters as a defence strategy.

“I am not in the business of feeding speculations, intoxications, mystifications,” Mr Barroso later told journalists on his way out of the courtroom.

When Times of Malta put Mr Barroso’s argument about political responsibility to Mr Dalli yesterday, he said: “That’s the political responsibility as he saw it.

“He made the wrong decision... he based himself on a fraud.”

The pleas made yesterday focused on the legal mechanics of Mr Dalli’s resignation.

Barroso made the wrong decision

In essence, Mr Dalli’s lawyers argued two basic points. The first is that Mr Dalli was presented with a fait accompli, and therefore the claim by the Commission that Mr Dalli chose to resign is bogus.

The second is that Mr Barroso did not take this decision diligently. That is, he did not devote enough time to the issue (Mr Dalli had famously revealed that at one point he was given 30 minutes to decide instead of the 24 hours he asked for) and did not make sure that the claims contained in the OLAF investigation were sound.

Mr Barroso, Mr Dalli’s lawyers maintained, failed to verify that the OLAF investigation had been vetted by its supervisory committee, which later criticised the investigation and underscored a series of potential irregularities.

The Commission’s lawyer counter-argued that Mr Barroso had no obligation or right to interfere with this investigation by trying to verify its legal soundness.

They insisted this was wholly irrelevant since Mr Dalli’s political position was undermined by the findings and this would only change once he cleared his name.

The diciest argument made by Mr Dalli’s team appears to be that he did not resign voluntarily.

Judges Nicholas Forwood spent some time probing this point, at times appearing frustrated.

For instance, he pointed out that when Mr Dalli was presented with a resignation letter which he had asked for, he crossed out a few lines with which he disagreed but failed to do the same with the line that said he was stepping down.

“I suppose the obvious question is, if this is how Mr Dalli felt (that he was being bullied into making this decision) why not cross out the crucial first line which said, ‘I resign with immediate effect”.

Here, Mr Dalli was consulted by his lawyer Stefano Rodriguez, who returned to say that his client understood that the content of the letter did not represent the conversation that he had with Mr Barroso and therefore he did not sign it.

Judge Forwood returned on that immediately: “I’m sorry I don’t understand... why did he not cross out that line when he then crossed out other stuff further down into the letter?”

Mr Rodriguez’s response was that one could not infer that Mr Dalli had accepted the rest of the letter’s content, because he did not sign it.

“Ultimately, he didn’t sign the letter and that is what counts,” he said.

This issue is at the heart of what the judges are being asked to decide.

They will now deliberate and deliver a judgment probably towards the end of the year or early next year.

mmicallef@timesofmalta.com