Controversial law that allows court to throw out requests to enforce European court orders against Maltese companies pits Constitution against supremacy of EU law
Malta’s parliament was a House divided in 2003: the ruling Nationalists toasted a referendum victory to take Malta into the EU, while the Opposition Labour was deeply eurosceptic.
Back then just a simple majority of MPs was needed to make the EU Accession Treaty the law that made Brussels’ regulations supreme. But it would have been impossible to secure a two-thirds majority to tend to one jigsaw piece: a constitutional article that makes the island’s supreme law impervious to EU law.
20 years later, Malta’s creaky Constitution is pitting the island against the supremacy of EU law.
And it comes in the form of a decree by a judge in the Superior Courts, to uphold recent and controversial amendments to Malta’s hallowed gaming laws.
The case concerns a request to enforce an Austrian court judgment obtained by Michael Christian Felsberger, for a garnishee order on a Maltese gaming company, TSG Interactive.
Delivered on 21 July 2023, Mr Justice Toni Abela blocked its enforcement. His decree was based on the amendments to the Gaming Act – controversial in themselves, because they allow the courts to refuse such foreign judgments and give immunity to gaming companies from such legal actions.
That alone flies in the face of Malta’s EU obligation to recognise and enforce the judgments of other EU courts in civil and commercial matters – the EU Regulation 1215 of 2012.
Malta’s amended gaming rules now introduce an ‘ouster clause’, that prohibits the courts from hearing a particular type of litigation. Their declared objective, as presented in the House, are the codification of Malta’s “long-standing public policy” to encourage the establishment of gaming businesses here – a protectionist law.
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https://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/national/124630/legal_shield_for_gaming_pits_malta_against_the_eu
