NEWS | Wednesday, 30 July 2008

EU kept in the dark over hearses subsidy

Charlot Zahra

The Maltese Government has not yet notified the European Commission about its decision to grant a €230,000 one-off subsidy to the ten funeral hearse owners to accept liberalisation of the sector.
Asked by Business Today whether the Maltese Government had informed the European Commission about the granting of this subsidy to funeral hearse owners in Malta, a commission spokesperson told this newspaper curtly: “No such aid was notified to the European Commission.”
The European Commission failed to answer a number of questions asked by Business Today, among other things, whether the Commission expected to be notified about the matter and why, whether the European Commission was investigating the granting of this subsidy or not, and if yes, when it started its investigations, whether the Maltese Government had been informed about the investigations or not, and how long the investigations were expected to take.
We also asked the Commission whether the investigations started following a complaint by somebody or out of the Commission’s own initiative, and if the Commission received a complaint, the date when it was received and the name of the complainant/s.
This deal was instrumental for the Motor Hearse Owners’ Association to accept the liberalisation of the funeral hearses’ market and withdraw from the Transport Federation late on Wednesday 16 July, three days after the transport strike had ended.
In his press conference shortly after securing the end of the strike and the hearse owners’ resignation from the Transport Federation against €230,000 compensation, Infrastructure, Transport and Communications Minister Austin Gatt said part of the offer would be used for the association’s marketing.
However, this was a risible prospect given that none of the hearses advertised their services, given that they are contracted by funeral directors.
In an interview with sister paper MaltaToday on 20 July, Motor Hearse Owners’ Association President John Bray said that they would probably distribute the amount among the 10 members, so they would end up getting like €23,000 each.
“I think that’s the whole point of the compensation, we’ll divide them between our 10 members, but I can’t confirm that before we discuss it,” Bray said.
Asked for his reaction to this, Gatt, in his no-holds-barred style, told Malta Today in an interview on 20 July: “That’s up to them. I gave the money to the association, what he does with them is up to them.
“Mind you this is not the first time we’re offering compensation as part of the liberalisation package. The last case we had was with pig rearers. When we changed the system radically we compensated them to be able to face competition,” Gatt said.
In this respect, the European Commission failed to answer a specific question by Business Today as to whether this subsidy was in line with the EU rules on State Aid or not and why.

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