ADT says new law must apply to garage

The Malta Transport Authority yesterday accused the Garden of Eden garage of expecting the law not to apply to it after new regulations came into force which affected some of its double-deckers.

The statement came in a response to a judicial protest filed by the garage. Garden of Eden had held that after a damning decision by the Fair Trade Commissioner last October declaring that the ADT had unfairly blocked the garage from operating its vehicles for years, the authority was again trying to stop it through new legislation.

The garage said that when it imported the buses, it paid the relevant duties and the vehicles were released by the Customs Department. But the process was eventually suspended when a new legal notice came into force.

The law said that buses built 10 years before the new rules came into force could only be used to offer a service on routes established by the ADT. This would affect some of the Garden of Eden's buses which were imported to be used across Malta and Gozo.

They had lain idle years in the garage, however, while the authority prevented the company from using them through measures described by the Commissioner as discriminatory and intended only to favour the competition, Garden of Eden claimed.

But the ADT yesterday said the garage was asking the courts not to apply the new legislation when it was clear that the courts had to impose the law.

From time to time, businesses were hit either negatively or positively by new laws that come into force. The Authority gave the example of VRT tests on vehicles, paying for parking in Valletta and the tax on plastic bags, among others.

Lawyers Henri Mizzi and Kristina Pullicino represented the ADT.