Court dismisses car importers' claims

A claim made by the Association of Car Importers Malta (ACIM) that importers of second hand cars are being given favourable treatment by the government through wrong application of the law, has been dismissed by the Civil Court.

The ACIM filed its action against the Malta Transport Authority, the Malta Standards Authority, MEPA, the Minister for Urban Development and Roads and the Minister for Competitiveness and Communications.

It claimed that the importation of cars was regulated by two legal notices which had their origin in two European Union directives.  However, according to the ACIM the importation of second hand cars was not being strictly regulated.While the importers of new cars were being required to produce a Certificate of Conformity, which imposed high health and environmental standards, importers of used vehicles were only being asked to produce a Single Vehicle Authorisation (SVA) issued by a British company in Japan on the basis of standards which were never published in Malta.

As a result, the ACIM said its member companies  were suffering damages and loss of sales, since half of imported cars were now used cars.

The ACIM requested the court to award it damages.

In her judgment Madam Justice Felice pointed out that the two legal notices cited by ACIM established certain criteria applicable to new cars. The cars had to achieve type approval and had to have a certificate of conformity. Type approval had to be applied for by the manufacturer of the car before the car was actually made. The certificate of conformity had then to be issued by the manufacturer to confirm that the car had been built according to the type approval. These rules, said the court, applied essentially to the design and manufacture of cars and imposed obligations upon the car manufacturer.

This procedure was therefore extraneous to the importation of used cars. When it came to the importation of used cars, each EU member state was entitled to stipulate national type approval procedures. A used vehicle which was imported from a third country outside of the EU and which had not been subject to EU type approval had to undergo a pre-registration inspection. This was referred to as the Single Vehicle Type Approval (SVA) and was carried out on behalf of the Maltese government by the Vehicle Certification Agency based in Japan.

Each used vehicle originating from a non-EU country had to be inspected by the Vehicle Certification Agency which could then issue a certificate certifying that the vehicle had been designed and built to safety and environmental standards as stipulated by the Malta government.

The court heard evidence to the effect that the Malta SVA scheme was largely based on the system in place in the United Kingdom. Madam Justice Felice pointed out that the EU directive on the importation of cars did not regulate the importation of used cars. Nor had any evidence been produced to show that the authorities had incorrectly applied the law.The court could not exclude that ACIM had suffered damages as a result of the laws but found that the laws had been applied correctly. The ACIM's claims were therefore dismissed.

The ACIM is composed of Gasan Enterprises Ltd, UCIM Co Ltd, Meridian Enterprises Ltd, Frank Borda Ltd, Associated Motors Co Ltd, Mira Motors Ltd, Nissan Motors Ltd, Continental Cars Ltd, United Automobiles Ltd, Muscat Motors Ltd, Industrial Motors Ltd, Auto Sales (Mer) Ltd, Auto Sales (Ren) Ltd, Michael Attard Imports Ltd, Michael Attard Distributors Ltd, Micard Ltd, Rohan Motors Ltd, Michael Debono Ltd, Easysell Kia Malta Ltd and Liaco Ltd.