Former Labour MEP lands Central Bank consultancy

The Central Bank has employed former Labour minister and MEP John Attard Montalto as a legal consultant on a €23,604 contract

The Central Bank employs John Attard Montalto, a former Labour minister and MEP, as a legal consultant
The Central Bank employs John Attard Montalto, a former Labour minister and MEP, as a legal consultant

The Central Bank has employed former Labour minister and MEP John Attard Montalto as a legal consultant on a €23,604 contract, data tabled in parliament shows. 

Attard Montalto’s name cropped up on a list of Central Bank consultants that finance minister Edward Scicluna had tabled, following a parliamentary question by PN deputy leader Mario de Marco. The list shows that Attard Montalto, a lawyer, has been employed as a Central Bank consultant since July 2015, on a €1,967 monthly contract as well as a €300 annual mobile allowance. 

A lawyer and close friend of the late former prime minister Dom Mintoff, Attard Montalto served as economy minister between 1996 and 1998 during Alfred Sant’s short-lived administration.

After failing in his bid for the Labour leadership, Attard Montalto became one of Malta’s first MEPs in 2004, when he was elected on the Labour ticket along with now-Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and deputy Prime Minister Louis Grech. He was re-elected as one of Labour’s three MEPs in 2009, along with Grech and finance minister Edward Scicluna. 

During his ten-year tenure as a MEP, Attard Montalto faced criticism over his poor attendance record at the Parliament. He had only attended two out of 25 meetings of the transport and tourism committee in 2005, and had told MaltaToday that the committee was “a waste of time 80% of the time”. 

He was notably absent for a crucial 2005 vote on a proposed directive that would have allowed ships entering EU ports to use their own manpower rather than local, reportedly because he was on a cruise in Mexico.

During his political career, he was also close to the hunting lobby and was indeed made honorary president of hunting federation FKNK. In 2011, he bizarrely claimed that the European Commission’s legal action against Malta over live-bird trapping was “having a life-threatening effect on up to 8,000 trappers and their suffering families” to the extent that there had been “unexplained deaths”.