The Government insisted yesterday it was aware of two infringement cases signalled by the European Commission in May on the non-notification of transposition measures of two EU directives.

There were no cases of opening of infringements

In a press release earlier this week, the European Affairs Ministry said no cases of infringement had been opened against Malta since March.

The ministry noted that the two cases highlighted by Times of Malta in a report yesterday “simply concern non-notification of transposition measures and were communicated to the Government outside the formal communication of the list of adopted decisions taken by the College of Commissioners following the monthly meetings”.

According to the ministry, “the Permanent Representation in Brussels does not make a distinction” between the two infringements highlighted by this newspaper and the pre-infringement stage – technically known as EU pilot – which concerns requests for information and clarifications by the Commission.

It insisted that the Government’s statement was “correct that there were no cases of opening of infringements in the list published by the Commission following the discussions by the College of Commissioners in its monthly infringement meeting since March”.

Documents in the possession of this newspaper show that following a meeting on May 29, the EU Executive decided to send two letters of formal notice to the Maltese government on the infringements of Council Directives 2011/97/EU and 2011/36/EU.

According to EU infringement rules, a letter of formal notice is the first stage of a three-pronged infringement procedure, which is followed by a reasoned opinion and a decision to a court referral.

When this newspaper attracted the ministry’s attention to the fact that the information contained in its press release was wrong, a ministry spokesman said that “if you are referring to EU pilots these are obviously pre-infringements”.