Individuals close to the workings of the European Parliament’s Petitions Committee have described MEP Simon Busuttil’s somewhat acerbic reaction to The Malta Independent on Sunday’s reporting of his recent statements to the Committee as “patently wrong”, “surprising”, and as representing a “misunderstanding of the procedures followed by the Committee”.

Briefly, two weeks ago this newspaper reported how three petitions against the proposed development of the Ulysses Lodge site at Ramla l-Hamra had been dropped by the Petitions Committee on the basis of European Commission information that the application had been rejected and on the basis of a confirmation by Committee member Dr Busuttil that the application had been rejected.

Following the article, which highlighted that both the Commission and the Committee had been misinformed since an appeals process was actually still pending on the application, Dr Busuttil insisted it was not his responsibility to provide information on the state of the Ramla Bay development and that he was correct in echoing the Commission’s information that the permit had been rejected without mentioning the ongoing appeal.

Reacting to the report last week, Dr Busuttil informed readers that petitions received by the Committee 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.”

Sources close to the Committee, however, describe the statement as “patently wrong”, explaining, “The idea that the Petitions Committee considers petitions ‘on the basis of information provided by the European Commission and by no one else’ is patently wrong.”

They refer to the 2007 annual report on petitions adopted by the European Parliament in September, for which Dr Busuttil served as the European Peoples Party shadow rapporteur, which states Parliament “firmly believes that priority should be accorded to enabling the Committee on Petitions itself to further enhance its own independent investigatory facilities, notably through the reinforcement of its secretariat and its legal expertise”.

As such, the statement that the Committee only considers the EC’s input was described as “slightly surprising”.

More importantly, it was pointed out, petitioners themselves also regularly provide more information and often appear before the Committee to contest the validity of the information given to the Commission, which normally comes from member States’ authorities – against which petitions’ allegations are usually directed.

“Besides this,” it is pointed out, “it is also ‘standard procedure’, to use Dr Busuttil’s expression, that MEPs provide the committee with information about petitions in the respective countries and regions. This would also seem rather natural as the MEPs are actually representing their constituencies and constituents, and many of them possess far more information about concrete and actual situations on the ground concerning petitions that they follow.”

While the Committee is not bound by such information provided by MEPs, it is neither bound by information provided by the European Commission. Moreover, the Petitions Committee often challenges the Commission’s position on petitions, including the information on which the Commission’s stance has been based.

Exception has also been taken to Dr Busuttil’s statement that even if Committee had been aware of the ongoing appeal against the development’s rejection, it would not have made a difference.

Dr Busuttil stated in his correspondence with this newspaper that, “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.”

But Committee sources insist the statement reflects a misunderstanding of the Committee’s procedures, and explain that if the Committee had been informed that an appeal was pending, the standard procedure would have been to keep the petitions open.

“There is again a misunderstanding of the procedures followed by the Committee. Dr Busuttil’s comment seems to imply that the Committee would automatically close petitions whenever no definitive infringement of Community law had yet taken place. This is not at all the case.

“On the contrary, the Committee often seeks to find solutions before it is too late and before irreversible damage is done. It is one thing to initiate legal proceedings before the European Court of Justice, including the preparatory steps required by the Treaty, and a completely different thing to keep an eye on a situation in order not to be caught off guard and act too late.

“Had the Committee been correctly informed, that is, had it been aware of the appeals procedure, including the subject of the appeal (and, thus, the ground for rejection of the application), the standard procedure would have been to keep the petition open. Presumably, the position of the European Commission would have been similar in the event.”

A bid to have the petitions reopened on the basis The Malta Independent on Sunday report that an appeal on the rejected application was still pending was rejected at the Committee’s last hearing, after Dr Busuttil and another EPP representative requested a written confirmation that the appeal against Mepa’s refusal of the Ramla application was still pending.

Another section of the press described how Dr Busuttil had “vehemently” opposed the petitions’ reopening, although he himself declares he stands foursquare against the proposed development.