Vehicle registration tax (2)

Robert Agius (The Sunday Times, April 6) took Labour MEP Joseph Muscat to task for failing to impress upon the Labour Party the need to address the car registration tax issue.

Mr Agius should have first checked his facts. A short search on the European Parliament's Website would have shown him that Mr Muscat first raised this issue in a parliamentary question tabled on July 20, 2007, and followed it up with another one last January. This was the answer he was given on February 29 by Mr Kovacs on behalf of the Commission:

"On January 31 the Commission sent a reasoned opinion to the Maltese authorities requesting Malta to change its legislation as regards the inclusion of the amount of the vehicle registration tax within the taxable amount of value added tax (VAT). A press release informing the public was published on the same day. If the legislation is not amended within two months in order to comply with the request, the Commission may decide to refer the matter to the European Court of Justice." Following this the government had no option but to abide by the Commission's opinion and the deadline set for compliance. With this foregone conclusion in hand, it would have been both futile and silly for the Labour Party to make an electoral pledge of this issue as the Nationalist Party did.

As for calling Mr Muscat "ubiquitous", I think that readers who follow the performance of our MEPs would take this more as a compliment. The results Mr Muscat obtained in the European Parliament, such as the groundbreaking agreement on the roaming tariffs of mobile telephony and the waiving and refunds of the fees on satellite dishes, speak for themselves.