For the second time in as many months, foreigners residing in Malta have come up against a blank very Maltese and very bureaucratic wall.

First came the hassle regarding their right to vote in the European Parliament elections.

Now, some 100 foreigners who have brought their car with them to Malta cannot have them registered in Malta and obtain the car registration tax exemption due to incredible bureaucratic red tape. They are starting to suspect that the real reason for the delays and obfuscation is that there are just too many of them and the exemption would cause the government to lose a considerable amount of money.

All this came about at a time when ADT and the government at large are struggling to cope with the changes in the car registration tax regime and the flood of used cars from abroad, mainly the UK.

“When we applied to AD for car tax registration exemption,” said an EU citizen who brought her rather old car with her when she relocated to Malta, “we were given two different versions of the law, and at least two different forms to fill up:

“1) We were asked to prove that, at the moment of our application, we had already been living in Malta for at least two years, and that we had previously spent many years in another EU country, where the car had been bought and registered.

“2) In another instance, some were asked to prove that they had just arrived in Malta at the moment of application.

“But the law was voted last November and they should have known exactly what to ask any European citizen applying to their office! We all received an acknowledgement of our application, and the number of the Ministry of Finance team to call for a follow up. None of us has yet received any written reply from the Ministry of Finance We have all been obliged to go personally to their office and ask for verbal (i.e. = unofficial) explanation.

“In the first case, we were told that we were not entitled to the exemption, because we should have shown that we had just arrived in Malta, and not that they we had been already living there...

“The explanation to some others is, possibly, even more hilarious: to one, who had arrived in Malta and applied end November, they have refused the exemption because, even though the law was voted end November, just before her arrival, in reality ‘it starts to apply only from January 2009, so only to people arrived from January 2009’...

“The other lady arrived in January 2009, and could prove it with an official stamp on her passport (done at the embassy in Malta), stating that she had formally taken up residence in Malta in January. In her case they replied that ‘the stamp done from the embassy is not official proof of taking up residence in Malta’...

“Many are beginning to feel it is perfectly clear that the Ministry of Finance is trying every possible trick not to apply the law and give this tax exemption to any EU citizen.

Some applicants have been shown a list in the ministry of about 100 people who had applied, and that they were told “you are too many, and the government cannot give this exemption to everybody, because this will be a big loss of money for the government”.

This is simply a scandal, the EU citizens who contacted this paper said, because the European Community has stated very clearly that there is absolutely no money due to the Maltese government for the registration of cars belonging to EU citizens, as long as they are able to prove that their car is an old one (more that two years of registration in the original country) and is simply imported like any other personal belonging (not for resale).

“There is no registration tax due simply because it has already been paid in the original country. This money already regularly paid by us many years ago should not be considered ‘Maltese money’ at all.”

What is due is just a simple registration duty stamp, which in all other EU countries, as far as is known, is never more than e200.

The foreigners in this quandary still use their car with its foreign number-plate, but they are aware that their car could be impounded at any time.

They have now contacted the European Commission Representation and their respective embassies and are considering what further steps to take. Anyone else who finds himself/herself in the same situation is asked to make the case known to italiamalta@gmail.com to find out what is being done.