Updated: EP’s legal affairs committee refers new Frontex rules to ECJ

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The decision to refer the European Commission to Court was taken during the EP’s legal affairs committee yesterday following a proposal by Nationalist MEP Simon Busuttil.

Sources told MaltaToday that the matter was first was voted upon in the EP's Civil Liberties Committee (LIBE).  There was a unanimous vote in favour of taking these FRONTEX guidelines to the ECJ.

Since the issue was a legal one, the matter was subsequently transferred to the legal committee of the EP (JURI), during which a unanimous vote was also taken in favour of proceeding yesterday, the sources added..

The controversial rules had caused uproar in Malta because migrants saved on the high seas during a Frontex mission would have had to be taken to the mission’s host country rather than the closer safe port. This meant that if Malta hosted a Frontex mission, as it had done in the past years, it would have had to receive all migrants saved on the Libya-Italy route.

This had led the Maltese Government to declare that Malta would not participate in Frontex missions under these conditions. In fact, this year’s Frontex mission off the cost of Libya was cancelled.

The Parliament was arguing that the Commission was wrong to present the rules in a manner that excluded Parliament from any possibility to amend them, leaving it with the limited choice of just accepting or rejecting them. Instead, it argued that the rules had to follow the normal legislative procedure that gave Parliament the full possibility to have its say.

As a result, the Parliament was insisting that the rules were invalid because the Commission had acted beyond its powers. The initiative was unanimously supported in both committees with the Legal Affairs Committee deciding unanimously on Wednesday. The rules were challenged by Busuttil in the EP since January. A motion to reject them had narrowly fell short of the required absolute majority last April.

However the MEP had now succeeded in persuading the Parliament to challenge them in court. All political groups in the Civil Liberties Committee and in the Legal Affairs Committee in the EP had supported the initiative of taking these guidelines to court on this basis.

 The ECJ was expected to rule on the case in around eighteen months. If the request was upheld, the rules would still continue to apply until they were replaced. Commenting on the Committee’s decision, Busuttil said: “Yesterday we have given notice to the Commission that not all is fine with these rules and it is time for a rethink. We want to ensure that Parliament's role is defended. But we must also ensure that these rules are fair. In their current version they are not."