A week before the June 6 European Parliament election, The Sunday Times asked all the candidates for a breakdown of how much they spent on campaigning. The object was to establish whether they had exceeded the €18,000 limit set by the law.

Most of Labour's candidates ignored our question, while the majority of PN candidates came forward with a party-dictated reply: "I am... unable to give you a comprehensive... account of the expenses incurred" until after the election.

The election came and went, and despite our repeated requests, not one of the elected MEPs disclosed how much they spent; though, according to the law, they had until last Friday to make a public declaration to the Electoral Commission.

In the intervening period, two Nationalist candidates who failed to get elected, Edward Demicoli and Frank Portelli, said on oath before a magistrate that although their personal spending was within the limit, they had still broken the law - because the relevant legislation states that "all money" provided by "any person" for "any expenses" incurred on account of, or in respect of, the conduct or management of the election, whether as a gift, loan, advance or deposit, form part of the maximum allowable expenditure. When the five MEPs made their declaration last Friday, all of them said they did not exceed the €18,000 threshold. Yet in the same breath they called for the law to be changed because, as one said, it did not reflect today's requirements since candidates must be able to communicate their message. This apparent contradiction prompts the question: why change a law when it serves your purposes to get elected?

Another MEP offered one explanation: "The current law needs to be examined and revised because it is full of ambiguities and open to different interpretations." The latter part of this sentence does not seem to hold water, because the law's expansive terminology appears to suggest that every single contribution to the campaign counts - whether it comes from the candidate himself or from the local butcher. It is not ambiguous.

The other prong of the argument the MEPs advanced was that the law "does not even give a cut-off date from when expenses should be calculated". And in an article in The Times yesterday, unelected candidate Roberta Metsola Tedesco Triccas pushed this line to one conclusion: "The law clearly states that the limit is on spending by a candidate and this beggars the question as to when does one become a candidate."

She then declared authoritatively that one only becomes a candidate when one's nomination has been "submitted correctly" to the Electoral Commission. In her case, that was on May 4, so the only expenses she counted for the purposes of the declaration were those spent in the last four weeks of the campaign.

However, the Oxford English Dictionary, which is considered by lawyers to be the starting point when an ordinary term has not been explained within legislation, does not seem to concur with Dr Metsola Tedesco Triccas' interpretation. It defines 'candidate' as "a person who seeks or is nominated for office". The key word in this definition is 'or'.

Lawyers also make use of a second stage when it comes to interpretation: How does the ordinary, reasonable man - that is you - understand the term? Does he consider the person who comes knocking on his door or who hands him a free gift two months before an election as an affable and generous person or as someone seeking office?

The law needs to be changed. There is no doubt about that. Indeed, we welcome yesterday's announcement that the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition have written to the Speaker urging the Select Committee on Constitutional Change to discuss the issue of candidates' spending.

Nor should there should be any issue of the current MEPs being unseated because they have done nothing other candidates did not do before them. But legal semantics will not do anybody any good.