Haulier sues Transport Malta over refusal to renew licence due to outdated law

A haulier who had been acquitted of operating without special licence plates last year, has threatened the Transport Authority with legal action, accusing Transport Malta of “deciding not to decide” by having failed to issue them to date.

In 2014 Joseph Galea's haulage business had been stopped in its tracks after he was told that he lacked an HQ numberplate on his vehicles. The licence is a requirement laid down by an outdated law which required hauliers to have a licence issued under the 1967 regulations.

Last year, the court, presided by Magistrate Aaron Bugeja, acquitted Galea of breaking the law, holding that the police had failed to substantiate their claims against Galea. No appeal was filed from this judgement.

Galea, who holds a National and International Operating Licence for the carriage of Goods on a hire and reward basis in Malta, was stopped on 17 April 2014 on arrival from Italy with two of his trailers containing community status cargo.

Galea was told that he could not exit the port with his second trailer because he did not have the old 1967 Hauliers Licence, a requirement of an anachronistic law which restricts access to hauliers with a licensing system which predates Malta’s joining the European Union. He had been operating freely within Maltese territory, including the port, as a haulier, for five years at that point.

Galea found himself in the anomalous situation whereby his National and International Operating licence entitled him to operate freely in all member states – except his own.

Galea had argued that the 1967 law had since been superseded by new laws after Malta's entry in the EU in 2004, which stipulated that this licence was to be issued by Transport Malta, instead of customs as had previously been the case.

Subsidiary legislation issued on 1 January, 2009 on the registration of vehicles, states that registration marks followed by letters “HQ” are required in the case of vehicles used for the carriage of goods by hauliers operating nationally. It makes no reference to any customs permits being necessary.

This morning, lawyers Michael Tanti-Dougall and Arthur Azzopardi filed a judicial letter addressed to the Ministry of Finance, the Customs Department, the Ministry for Transport and Infrastructure and the Transport Authority, on Galea's behalf.

The letter, filed in the First Hall of the Civil Court, claims that the refusal to issue the HQ number plates was not a decision the Transport Authority had been legally entitled to make. Additionally, Galea claims that the authorities were yet to give him an explanation for what he described as an “arbitrary decision”, other than a verbal statement that it was “the custom, and must be respected.”

The Authority's failure to decide on the issue was in breach of the Competition Act and “particularly through the abusive behaviour of the Transport Authority, which, without giving a decision to the plaintiff had decided not to decide the matter.”