The European Commission cannot intervene in a judicial protest filed by a Senglea resident alleging that the "loud" chimes of the city's parish clock breach an EU directive - because no such provision exists in EU law.
Through her lawyer Anna Mallia, Senglea resident Anna Spiteri, who lives in close proximity to the church, earlier this month filed a judicial protest in the Maltese courts against Joanna Drake as head of the EU Representation Office in Malta, complaining about the "intolerable and unbearable" chimes of the church clock every 15 minutes.
Ms Spiteri even resorted to the University's faculty of engineering to carry out noise readings from her terrace which found that the sound intrusions are 35 decibels higher than the maximum 55 decibels established by World Health Organisation guidelines.
Ms Spiteri argued that the loud chimes were in breach of the EU directive on noise levels, which provided that Malta ought to have established noise strategic maps by June last year. She claimed that this was not done and the European Commission failed to take any action. The judicial protest was also filed against Archpriest Joe Grech, Archbishop Paul Cremona, the chairman of the Malta Environment and Planning Authority and the Environment Minister.
A Commission official in Brussels said that the judicial protest against the Commission failed to hold water on a number of counts.
"First of all there is no EU directive that applies to this specific case. There are no decibel levels allowed by EU directives and in fact the protester did not indicate in her judicial protest what EU directive is being breached.
The only applicable legislation in this area is Directive 2002/49/EC relating to the assessment and management of environmental noise which, however, does not set any limit values at national level," the official in the Environment Directorate said.
The same official said that Maltese lawyers must also bear in mind that the Commission cannot be summoned before national courts.
"Basic knowledge of EU legislation states that the EU institutions can only be seized in front of the European Court of Justice. This applies to any case related to the EU institutions, including similar judicial protests filed recently against the Commission in front of the Maltese courts over tuna quotas."
The EU official said neither the Commission in Brussels nor its representation office in Malta had ever received any complaints from Ms Spiteri over this issue.
Normal EU procedure in similar cases is to register an official complaint before the EU institutions, particularly the Commission so that they can be investigated.