Malta’s Office for Competition remains without a Director General after Godwin Mangion, who had served in the role for the previous nine years, retired.

The responsibilities of the Director General for Competition with regard to the oversight of mergers and acquisitions in Malta have instead been apportioned between the Director for Communications, Energy, Transport and Financial Services Markets, who oversees concentration and the observance of competition law in regulated markets, and the Director for Primary, Industrial and Retail Markets, who focuses on other elements of the economy.

In a response to a parliamentary question posed by Opposition MP Chris Said, Prime Minister Robert Abela said the two officials have been given the necessary authority to act as Interim Directors General with respect to the approval of market concentrations that fall within their respective domains.

He said that that this arrangement was necessary due to a provision in competition law that requires decisions about market concentration to be taken within a stipulated time-frame.

Without their input, he continued, any proposed market concentrations would automatically be considered legitimate.

The Prime Minister further clarified that no Interim Director has been appointed to assume all the responsibilities of the Director General of the Office for Competition.

“These responsibilities will be assumed by the person appointed Director General for a period of three years, in line with the law,” he said.

The parliamentary question and the response given are ostensibly a response to a report carried by Times of Malta in October, that quoted industry sources expressing concern about the validity of decisions taken by the Office for Competition over the last year.

Such decisions included assessments on supermarket chain Lidl’s attempt to take over a Scotts supermarket in Żabbar, British airline easyJet’s completed acquisition of the SR Technics maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) facility, KDM Investments’ takeover of G4S Group, and several others in the medical and pharmaceutical fields.

Difficulties in finding a Director General for the Office for Competition are nothing new. Mr Mangion himself was appointed after a contested process that saw his predecessor, Sylvann Aquilina Zahra, replaced after just three years – allegedly after refusing to disclose information about her investigations to Government Ministers.

In 2021, Chief Justice Mark Chetcuti criticised the 2014 selection board for the role, arguing that they were “not qualified” for the job after finding that they had specifically highlighted their objection to the fact that the candidates showed an inclination that the office should work independently from other branches of the authority.

Malta’s Office for Competition stands out in the EU for being a unit in a Government ministry, rather than an independent authority. It is therefore subject to far more political pressure and enjoys less autonomy than its European counterparts.

While many other state institutions, like the Malta Communications Authority or the Central Bank, must be nominally independent entities under EU law, the Office for Competition does not have the same obligation. Nonetheless, practically every other EU country does in fact set it up to ensure it is fully independent from political interference or instruction.