When trade is no longer fair | Anthony Galea

At a glance there seems to be not a single position connected with the Trade Fair that Anthony Galea hasn’t occupied at one point or another.

From secretary to treasurer to vice-president to president and back to secretary again, Galea has covered practically every executive post available on the Trade Fair Council (TFC).

He is also president of the Trade Fair Exhibitors’ Association (TFEA), and as such is now deeply involved in an ongoing spat with the Malta Fairs and Conventions Centre (MFCC) in Ta’ Qali. The bone of contention revolves around the right to hold ‘trade fairs’, in a country where trade is not always exactly fair.

Like all conflict scenarios, the background is complex. For half a century, the annual International Trade Fair of Malta has been held at the Naxxar Trade Fair grounds belonging to Scicluna Estates (originally part of the gardens of Palazzo Parisio). But in recent years, pressure has been mounting for the Trade Fair to be moved to another location, largely on account of traffic congestion in and around Naxxar.

Galea acknowledges that it was and still is an issue.

“I don’t hold it against the Naxxar local council for objecting to the Trade Fair,” he explains as we settle down for an interview. “It’s natural that they would want to protect their own turf. They are representing the interests of their community…”

But at the same time he argues that traffic problems alone are not reason enough to stop an event altogether.

“I live in Attard, and my locality is affected by all the traffic of the football at Ta’ Qali. So what do you do? Stop the football? Sliema also has traffic problems on account of its shopping centres... but you don’t shut down the shopping centres because of the traffic. Likewise, Floriana and Valletta have traffic problems, especially when you have major events like concerts, and so on.”

However, as we get down to discussing the issue it turns out that traffic is the least of the problems involved. Galea also hints darkly at ‘vested interests’ and ‘hidden agendas’ lurking behind the wall of resistance he has encountered when trying to return the Trade Fair to its ancestral home.

“Four years ago, when the lease was due to expire, the Trade Fair Corporation tried buying the premises off Scicluna Estates,” he explains. “We arrived at a draft konvenju (agreement of sale), but the majority of members voted against, arguing that it was too expensive. In my view, it was not.”

The TFC ownership comprised government representatives, the Chamber of Commerce/Federation of Industry (now combined into one entity), the GRTU, The Malta Society of the Arts, and the Trade Fair Exhibitors’ Association (TFEA).

Considering the diversity of interests involved, it is perhaps unsurprising that no agreement was reached.

Either way, after the expiry of the lease in August 2007, the Trade Fair Corporation started looking for an alternative venue.

“We entered into negotiations to buy 10 tumoli of private land in Ta’ Qali, in the vicinity of Flower Power. But the Malta Environment and Planning Authority kept coming up with new demands and conditions – traffic assessment plans, and so on – and in the end we couldn’t get a permit to erect the facilities for a fair.”

Failing to acquire a permit, TFC teamed up with a private company – Sign It Ltd – to form the Malta Fairs and Conventions Centre (MFCC). But financial problems quickly cropped up.

Galea explained that MFCC was technically insolvent, and that the Bank of Valletta ‘very insistently’ starting calling in its loans.
Eventually, Sign It Ltd teamed up with another private company, Nexos Ltd, and bought out TFC’s shares at a nominal price.

“Strangely, the bank was no longer so keen on calling in the company’s loans after that,” Galea points out wryly.

Nor was BOV the only institution to apparently change attitude regarding MFCC following the transfer of ownership. MEPA suddenly seemed to less stringent, too.

“In the same year we were refused our Ta’ Qali permit, MEPA issued a permit to MFCC to erect trade fair facilities the Ta’ Qali tent on public land… all within six months, and without a traffic assessment plan.”

MFCC began hosting its own trade fairs at the Ta’ Qali tent, operating under the name Malta Trade Fairs. But the Trade Fair Corporation, which retained the registered name ‘International Trade Fair of Malta’, persisted in its efforts to secure a venue of its own, and last year struck a deal to rent out the Naxxar Trade Fair Grounds on a five-year lease.

“Once we had secured the venue, we applied for a licence from the Department of Trade to hold the fair this year,” Galea continues, adding that this should really have been just a formality.

And yet, that is precisely where the real trouble began.

Again, the issue is a complex one. A permanent licence associated with the venue itself (Naxxar has been licensed to host fairs for the past 50 years) is apparently not enough; for each individual fair, the Trade Department also has to issue an individual ad hoc permit.

Galea explains that there are two conditions for an ad hoc permit to be issued: one must either have a venue permanently licensed to organize fairs; or alternatively, a retail outlet which is temporarily licensed to host a fair.

“There are other conditions to be met. You need a list of exhibitors – never mind if the list is afterwards amended, but you need at least a tentative list just to be able to apply. You need to pay an application fee, depending on how many exhibitors, the duration of the fair, etc.”

All these conditions were duly met, but when it came to the crunch, the Trade Department refused to process the ad hoc permit, claiming that venue itself was ‘not licensed’ to host fairs.

“According to the Trade Department’s interpretation of the law, a licence which had been used for 50 years to hold fairs was actually only intended to ‘hold an office’ for the management of the same fairs,” Galea explains with an incredulous look.

In other words, I ask: all trade fairs ever held at the Naxxar Trade Fair grounds were illegal? He nods.

Moreover, it turned out that the ‘permanent’ licence had meanwhile been revoked altogether.

“We found out that the existing permit (44/130) had been irregularly closed in 2009 – irregularly, because the Trade Department never got permission from the landlords and neither did they take the initiative to inform the Trade Fairs Corporation.”

Both these are legally stipulated conditions for the withdrawal of a trade licence. But while the department never informed the owners that their licence had been withdrawn, it did take the trouble of tracing the heirs of Gerald Gatt – who was TFC general manager 35 years ago – and withdrew the licence on the grounds that his heirs did not express an interest in having it renewed.

Galea insists that this is irrelevant – the licence does not ‘belong’ to the applicant, still less to his heirs, but to the owners of the premises.

Meanwhile other objections to the Naxxar trade fair were also raised: among them, that a MEPA permit was also required. Galea however points outs that one by one, all these objections fizzled out.

Last January, MEPA itself announced that no additional permit was needed for the Naxxar grounds to host a fair this year.

But still, the department refused to issue the licence.

“It was becoming clear that these were just excuses, delaying tactics. After a while we couldn’t take it any more, and took the matter to Court.”

Before turning to the court ruling last June, I ask Anthony Galea what he himself attributes all this resistance to the trade fair returning to Naxxar.

Leaving aside the traffic objections and (more cogently) all the conspiracy theories regarding the personal connections of MFCC’s new shareholders… why are some people so adamant that the trade fair does not go back to its roots? In reply, Galea invites me to consider the difficulties encountered by the trade fair organizers since they started using the new location at the Ta’ Qali tent.

“I have been involved with trade fairs for 30 years, and it is true that some of us used to complain that the Naxxar setting was too much of a ‘family outing’ to encourage serious trade. With hindsight, however, we now know that this is exactly what the Maltese people wanted. Most would agree that the new venue is simply not a good place for a trade fair. It’s good for concerts and other such events; but the Naxxar Grounds, with its gardens, its trees, its family-outing environment, is ultimately what works better for a trade fair locally.”

If any doubt remained that “ulterior motives” had guided all parties concerned to prevent a competing trade fair at such a popular venue, Galea points towards the telltale testimony of one of the witnesses in the court case.

According to Galea, Dr Geoffrey Farrugia Mifsud, a former secretary at MFCC, openly admitted in court that “If the Naxxar Trade Fair opens, MFCC will face serious financial repercussions.”

“Our lawyer (Prof. Ian Refalo) immediately asked him, ‘so what you are saying is that you want a monopoly on trade fairs in Malta’. I knew there and then that we had won the case…”

In fact, Mr Justice Darmanin Demajo went on to rule in favour of TFC, and ordered the Trade Department to “process the application immediately”.

But even with a direct court order to that effect, no licence has to date been forthcoming.

“Incredibly, when we demanded our licence, as ordered by the Court, the Trade Department’s response was that ‘they had already processed the application, and the answer was no’.”

Meanwhile, the Attorney General has filed an appeal against the ruling… and Galea claims that last week, he and his partners at TFC were told point-blank, by the Director of Trade Services Brian Montebello, that even if the appeal was turned down, he would still refuse to issue the permit.

“What authority does the director of trade have to refuse a permit, when the law courts have ordered him to issue one?” Galea asks rhetorically. He goes on to express his ‘disappointment’ at how things haven’t really changed since the days when this sort of behaviour was commonplace.

“In Mintoff’s time we would expect this sort of thing. But not today,” he says with a shake of his head. “We are EU members now, and supposed to be operating in a free market. Can you imagine a new shopping centre like Tigne Point not being given a licence to operate, because (for example) the Plaza doesn’t want the competition?”

Gauci shakes his head.

“I have always believed in democracy. I fought for democracy in the past. I can’t accept that what I fought for now turns against me like that…”