Garden of Eden Ltd has been awarded €50,000 in compensation after a court ruled that the Transport Ministry and the Prime Minister had impeded the company from making use of its open top buses.

A constitutional application was filed by Alfred and Joseph Spiteri and Garden of Eden Ltd against the minister, the Prime Minister and Transport Malta but Mr Justice Tonio Mallia exonerated the latter from all responsibility.
The court heard that the company wished to operate open top double decker buses in Malta and imported three in 2004. 

Transport Malta had refused to licence the buses on grounds that they were not in conformity with the law in force at the time. 

The Commission for Fair Trading had, in 2008, found in favour of the company and ordered the issue of licences for the three buses.
In 2008, the company imported another eight buses but these were not licensed after the process was halted by the minister on grounds that new regulations were to be issued to govern the operation of such buses on the local market. 

The regulations were issued in 2009 but the authorities had not issued the bus licences.

The company had filed a court case about this, and last month the Court of Appeal found that the failure to issue the licences was in violation of the law.
The court added that throughout all the years, the company had only been allowed to make use of the first three buses and not the other eight it had imported.
The company requested the court to find that the failure on the part of the authorities to issue the licences had constituted interference in its right to enjoyment of its open top buses.

Mr Justice Mallia noted that the government had issued a call for tenders to operate open top buses for the tourist industry.

This tender was awarded to Supreme Travel Ltd, a competitor of Garden of Eden Ltd.  It resulted that the buses imported by Supreme Travel Ltd were similar to those imported by Garden of Eden, but only the buses imported by Supreme Travel Ltd were granted a licence.

The court added that the government had halted the issue of licences on the basis that numerous applications for the operation of open top buses had been received after the Commission for Fair Trading's ruling in 2008. 

The government had been taken by surprise because the regulations for this business had not been published.  But the government had only itself to blame as it had delayed regulating the sector for years.

The court found in favour of the Garden of Eden Ltd and ruled that its rights to enjoyment of its property had been violated.