Malta's five elected MEPs will be declaring under oath they did not exceed the maximum €18,000 allowed by law during the past electoral campaign, a threshold deemed by many as "unrealistic".
All candidates in June's MEP elections have until tomorrow to present the Electoral Commission with a breakdown of expenses incurred during their electoral campaign.
The electoral law provides that a candidate in any election cannot spend more than €1,380 per district on promotion. Given that the MEP elections are fought across all districts in Malta and Gozo, the limit rises to €18,000.
Two of the unelected candidates have already admitted they exceeded the threshold and are likely risking minimal consequences such as a fine.
The stakes are much higher for elected candidates who risk losing their seats if they admit breaking the law.
Candidates Frank Portelli and Edward Demicoli declared they were unable to take an oath according to the form provided by the Electoral Commission. To do so, they insisted, would be to take a false oath.
Pressed yesterday to declare their intention with regard to their expenses declarations, all five MEPs said they would be abiding by the law and present the necessary documentation together with the required oath to the Electoral Commission.
So far, the only MEP who has presented a breakdown of all campaign expenses together with an oath is Labour MEP John Attard Montalto. The other four MEPs, Simon Busuttil and David Casa for the Nationalist Party and Louis Grech and Edward Scicluna for Labour said they would be doing so by tomorrow.
Asked to quantify how much they spent in the run-up to last June's elections, they all said the details would be passed on to the Electoral Commission and would eventually be published.
Prof. Scicluna, Labour's newest MEP and himself a former electoral commissioner, said that "all our declarations will be made public as these will eventually be published according to law by the Electoral Commission in the Government Gazette".
Insisting that they remained within the expenses limit imposed by the law, all Maltese MEPs argued that the legal threshold as to what a candidate could spend on an election campaign should be revised as it was "obsolete".
They said the change should also cover the national general elections, pointing out that all elected MPs last year declared they did not exceed the €1,380 limit for every district they ran for in the 2008 election.
"The current law needs to be examined and revised as it is full of ambiguities and open to different interpretations," Dr Busuttil said. "It does not even give a cut-off date from when expenses should be calculated and what exactly should be included in the breakdown of expenses."
There was even a divergence between what the English and the Maltese text of the same law stated, Mr Casa said.
"While the English version states that the oath has to be taken by the candidate's agent, the Maltese version states it must be taken also by the candidate himself."
Described as "limiting freedom of expression", Prof. Scicluna said the law did not reflect today's requirements as candidates had to communicate with the public using various means in order to put across their programme.
"Eighty per cent of my expenses were related to advertising," Dr Attard Montalto said.
"The two parties and civil society need to sit down together and take a good look at the provisions of this law, which has been in place for a long time. We need a reform," he argued.