Changes in local legislation relating to aviation have required alterations to a collection of laws to allow the proper functioning of the new mechanism, a seminar on civil aviation law and policy at the University heard recently.
The seminar, organised by the commercial law department of the Faculty of Laws, discussed major highlights in the development of civil aviation law, policy and infrastructure in recent years. It was held as part of a new elective study unit on aircraft registration and finance offered to law students at the University of Malta.
Speakers included Anthony Gatt, former director general of Civil Aviation, Joseph Schembri, former policy co-ordinator at the Ministry for Transport, Infrastructure and Communication, and Max Ganado, managing partner at Ganado and Associates Advocates.
The discussion was moderated by Tonio Fenech, managing partner at Fenech Farrugia Fiott Legal, and co-ordinator of the study unit which is being offered from this year.
Mr Gatt explained how a vision of Malta as a ‘staging post’ for air traffic and a post-independence drive to develop tourism called for a strategy which would allow many more commercial flights.
Mr Schembri discussed the economic, social and political considerations that led to the enactment of the Aircraft Registration Act in 2010.
“Today leading names are now looking at Malta and a vibrant cluster is slowly developing. It is clear that this is not a perfect parallel to the development of merchant shipping, however a number of policy lessons were learnt from the experience, particularly the importance of having clear vision, but also the ability to improvise, to have the political will and to translate this will to an organisational level,” he said.
Dr Ganado highlighted the very strong parallels that existed between laws dealing with aviation and the Merchant Shipping Act.
He said the secret of Malta’s success in the ship registration and finance area was that the law did not follow the civil law tradition of being generally debtor-friendly, but rather, it followed the Anglo-American route of being more creditor-friendly.
“We have a civil law system which is debtor-friendly and we have an English law system in Merchant Shipping act and Civil Aviation Act that is creditor-friendly, a challenge that even our judges need to deal with. However this also becomes one of the strong selling points in our system.
“Apart from Malta, the only other countries in our position are England, Ireland and Cyprus.
“This is a strong selling point for Malta as a borrower would not come to Malta voluntarily; it is only because a bank would allow him to, and this is clearly the case in the shipping industry, and increasingly so also in aviation.”
Dr Fenech said that the successful developments that have taken place in the areas of ship and aircraft finance would indicate that the time may have now come to move away from the piecemeal approach taken in the past, and to deal with the field of asset finance more comprehensively.