From Dr S. Busuttil MEP

I refer to your front-page report “Deception on Ramla Bay development exposed” (TMIS, 2 November) that makes surprising, yet unfounded, allegations in my regard, which I categorically reject.

The facts of the case are very simple.

The Petitions Committee of the European Parliament recently considered three petitions against the Ramla Bay development and closed them on the basis of information provided by the European Commission that no such development would take place because no permit would be granted. Clearly, therefore, there was no basis for accepting the petitions since there was no development approved to take place in the first place.

Yet, reporting on the committee meeting, at which I was present, your report spins a web of deception that does not exist at all. Worse, it gratuitously attributes to me ulterior motives without so much as hearing my side of the story before going to print.

Allow me, therefore, to give my side of the story:

Firstly, petitions received by the Petitions Committee of the European Parliament are considered on the basis of information provided by the European Commission and by no one else. This is standard procedure and it means that it was not for me to come up with information on the state of the Ramla Bay development but for the European Commission. We rely on the information provided by the Commission. The information note drawn up by the Commission is dated March 2008 and there was no change in the status of the development since then. So its information was correct.

On my part, I had no reason to contest the information provided by the Commission that no permit would be granted. On the contrary, I welcomed it, as, like the petitioners, I too am opposed to this development.

Secondly, the petitions in question were not closed on the basis of my intervention as The Malta Independent on Sunday wrongly states but on the basis of the Commission statement that no permit would be granted and therefore no further action was necessary.

Although the Commission made no reference to an outstanding appeal, this would not have changed anything at all since when the petitions were considered, no development was authorised and therefore there was no basis for accepting them. To date, the position is still the same. My intervention simply agreed with the Commission recommendation that there was no point in continuing with the petitions since there was no approved development to object to in the first place.

Thirdly, the report seems to confuse the proceedings of the Petitions Committee with judicial proceedings underway in Malta when the two are separate and do not depend on each other. The Committee reached its conclusion on the basis of information available to it at that point, namely that there was no permit for this development. If, in future, this position changes as a result of judicial proceedings in Malta, then the petitioners remain entitled to present a new petition. So your claim that the petitioners are in a grey area or that their right to petition was compromised is incorrect.

Fourthly, your claim that I did not issue a press release on this case but issued one on the Sant Antnin petition (considered on the same day) insinuates that I was trying to hide something. This is ridiculous because the meeting was held in public with all documents and recordings publicly available. So The Malta Independent on Sunday can hardly claim to have “exposed” something because nothing was hidden at all.

Quite apart from the fact that I do not issue a press release every time I intervene in committee meetings – as The Malta Independent on Sunday seems to expect – the reason why I did not issue a statement in this case was simply because my intervention made no difference to the outcome.

This is the opposite to what happened on the Sant Antnin petition, a few minutes earlier, where it was my insistence that secured the closure of this long-standing petition on the grounds that no breach of EU law was found.

On the basis of the above, your accusations of deception and your conclusion that this case should put me in an uncomfortable position are baffling. Evidently the conspiracy theories are merely a figment of the imagination of the people who fed this story to your esteemed paper. But they are completely disconnected from the truth and from my intentions.

It is also a pity that a respected newspaper of the standing of The Malta Independent on Sunday should attack my integrity in such a gratuitous manner without as much as hearing my side of the story in advance. Although I will not be a judge in my own cause, I can assure you that I have no reason to feel uncomfortable because I always seek to perform my duties in Parliament to the best of my ability and without fear or favour.

Simon Busuttil

VALLETTA