The Labour Party is facing the possibility of eviction from its club premises in Żurrieq after a court declared the law under which it has leased a prime site since the early 1970s breaches the landlady’s rights.

The appeal court ordered the state advocate to pay property owner Catherine Curmi €75,000 in pecuniary damages and €8,000 in moral damages.

It also ruled that the club can no longer seek protection of its lease under the law on protected pre-1995 rents. Under this law, lessors could not increase the rental value or refuse to extend the lease.

Curmi had claimed a breach of her right to the peaceful enjoyment of her property in filings before the First Hall of the Civil Court in its Constitutional Jurisdiction.

She had inherited a property on Triq Mons Pietru Pawl Saydon which she then leased out to the Labour Party in 1973 on a 10-year contract.

At the time, the party paid €166.66 every three months, which was raised to €203.82 from 1985. In 1994, the rent was increased to €1,164 annually and then adjusted to €1,324, including the cost of living.

The property is currently valued at €440,000.

Curmi argued that the party was paying much less in rent than the real value of the property due to provisions in Chapter 69 of the laws of Malta which protects pre-1995 rents. 

She held that the protection granted to tenants through that law did not create a balance between the rights of the landlord and those of the tenant.

Previous court rulings had described this as a forced landlord-tenant relationship.

Curmi also argued that the legal protection offered to political clubs was intended to protect the cultural aspect of social clubs deemed to have an important role in the country’s history and part of its national heritage. Once the authorities felt that band clubs were part of the country’s heritage, their protection should be supported by the state and not by the landlords.

Club's bid for state protection shot down on appeal

The court found in favour of Curmi. Club representative Annetto Farrugia appealed the judgment.

Measures which facilitate the operations of a political party cannot be classified as being in the general interest

He argued that the value of political party clubs could not underestimated by the court and that they merited protection from the state.

Judges Giannino Caruana Demajo, Tonio Mallia and Anthony Ellul, sitting in the Court of Appeal, rubbished this argument.

In their judgment, they said they had carefully considered the fundamental role that political parties play in a democratic society and the protection of pluralism for a democratic system to function.

However, they also considered whether measures imposed by the state in the rent-law regime were objectively and reasonably necessary for the protection of political pluralism.

This case, they said, went beyond what was reasonably necessary to guarantee the functionality of the democratic system, since it was about a local club and not, for example, the party headquarters.

The court noted that a bar was generating profits for the club.

The three judges said the legal measures had to strike a balance between the interests of the individual and the general interest of the community.

“Such measures should be objectively and reasonably necessary for the safeguarding of political pluralism. Measures which go beyond such aims, which facilitate the operations of a political party, cannot be classified as being in the general interest, since they become measures in the interest of the political party itself rather than measures in the public interest,” the court ruled.

The court found that Curmi was being forced to continue supporting and assisting a political party irrespective of her wishes.

This was disproportionate and against the basic principle of a democratic society in which an individual’s freedom to association should prevail.