John Dalli has appealed a European Court of Justice ruling that threw out his case against the European Commission for unfair dismissal.
The former European health commissioner filed the appeal last week, two months after his case was dismissed by the ECJ.
In a two-page judgment the ECJ found that Mr Dalli had “resigned voluntarily” from European health commissioner in 2012 and ruled that his case was “inadmissible”.
The court also rejected Mr Dalli’s claim for compensation.
The case goes back to October 2012 when former European Commission President José Manuel Barroso confronted Mr Dalli with the conclusions of an investigation by OLAF, the EU’s anti-fraud agency.
OLAF had implicated Mr Dalli in a case of alleged bribery to change EU tobacco legislation and lift a ban on snus, an oral tobacco.
The investigation established there was circumstantial evidence to suggest Mr Dalli knew that his former canvasser and Sliema restaurateur Silvio Zammit had asked for €60 million from Swedish Match, a Swedish tobacco firm, and snus lobbyists.
Mr Zammit was subsequently charged by the police in Malta with trading in influence and bribery. The case is ongoing.
Mr Dalli has repeatedly claimed that the OLAF investigation was a fraud and denied any wrongdoing.
He subsequently took the European Commission to court for unfair dismissal, adding he was not even given enough time to rebut the conclusions of the report.
The court found that Mr Dalli had resigned voluntarily
Mr Dalli claimed during the meeting Mr Barroso asked for his resignation. Mr Dalli asked the ECJ to annul the alleged oral request. But Mr Barroso always contended that Mr Dalli resigned voluntarily.
The court concluded that, on the basis of testimonies by various European Commission officials who joined the last part of the Barroso-Dalli meeting and evidence presented before it, Mr Dalli “had resigned orally”.
“The court finds that Mr Dalli resigned voluntarily, no formal request for his resignation having been made by President Barroso.”
Mr Barroso had in fact decided that Mr Dalli should leave the Commission after not having provided a full and convincing explanation when faced with OLAF’s conclusions. But Mr Barroso had told the court he had accorded Mr Dalli the “political favour” of giving him the opportunity to resign voluntarily.
The absence of a formal request, which the court had been asked to annul, led the ECJ to dismiss Mr Dalli’s case.