The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Louis Galea assured the European Parliament he had the necessary expertise to work at the European Court of Auditors.

Dr Galea quashed comments made after his nomination that he did not have the necessary financial and technical expertise to act as one of the EU's auditors. On the contrary, he said, his long experience as minister responsible for an array of portfolios made him more than qualified to occupy the prestigious EU post in Luxembourg.

"My experience in public finance and management derives from the years served as Speaker of the House of Representatives and as minister and member of Cabinet over a period of over 24 years in Malta," he wrote in a questionnaire sent to him by the European Parliament's Committee on Budgetary Control (COCOBU) in preparation for his hearing in two weeks' time in Brussels.

Dr Galea, the longest-serving minister in the Fenech Adami Administrations and considered by many as the architect of the new Nationalist Party following the end of the Borg Olivier era in the mid-1970s, said that many ministerial posts he occupied involved the evolution of an entire legislative process and decisions concerning large-scale projects, financed through substantial public funds.

Describing himself as a "protagonist, with others, in the success story of Malta's transformation, resilience and determination," Dr Galea cited, among the most important decisions of his professional life, his contribution towards Malta joining the EU, the introduction in 1987 of "a wide-ranging social policy reform programme directed at shifting Malta's welfare state from a culture of dependence to one where the individual is empowered to assume greater command of one's own potential" and a radical reform of Malta's public education system including the foundation of the Malta Council for Arts and Sciences.

Dr Galea will now be appearing before MEPs on March 18 for a grilling of the Court of Auditors.

If approved, Dr Galea will replace Josef Bonnici in May.