Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1547431
10 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 1 NOVEMBER 2026 NEWS Removing free bus pass for foreigners Italy was told off by the EU's top court for pulling third country nationals out of a supermarket family discount card. Malta's budget goes a good deal further. MALTA is not the first coun- try to turn to third country nationals to squeeze a little extra money out of them. It- aly did the same homework years ago, and the European Court of Justice returned its copybook bleeding red ink. Italy's case was over a su- permarket discount card. A card you'd swipe at the till for a few per cent off the week- ly grocery run. And Italy lost the case. Before we go any further, keep in mind that EU law says that non-EU workers on a single permit, the very people caught in the headlights of Clyde Caruana's budget, must be treated the same as locals in a handful of areas, such as social security and access to goods and services on offer to the public. Single permit holders are, broadly, everyone who hasn't yet secured long-term resi- dence. They are those who have not been here for five years, and those still angling for a seat in the oversub- scribed 'I belong course'. From January, these peo- ple will have to fork out €33 a month for a bus they used to hop on for free like every- one else without so much as a disapproving harrumph—the odd elbow in the ribs not- withstanding. The family card Italy's 2016 budget dreamt up the Carta della Famiglia, a card for families with three or more children. Flash it at a participating business and you would get money off groceries, medicines, school books, utility bills and cinema tickets. And, as it happens, bus tickets. At first, it was open to an- yone living legally in Italy: Italians, EU citizens and third country nationals alike. Three years later, the gov- ernment got cold feet about its own generosity. The 2019 budget struck third country nationals off the list and kept the card for Italian and EU families. The cheeseparing did not even save a cent. As digital newspaper Il Post pointed out at the time, the discounts were funded by the shops and businesses that chose to take part, not by the taxpayer. ASGI, an association of Italian immigration lawyers, took the government to court in Milan. In October 2021, the European Court of Justice ruled that taking away the card broke EU law. The judges did say that the card was not a social security benefit. It was not designed to help families make ends meet the way a children's al- lowance does. But whatever else it was, they said, the card let peo- ple buy goods and services on offer to the public "ac- companied by a discount or a price reduction". And on that front, single permit holders are entitled to the same deal as everyone else. The Maltese Government may well argue that free pub- lic transport is not social as- sistance and thus not covered by the directive. But in the Italian case, the court looked at what the scheme did, not what it was called. If a groceries card in Italy that knocked a few cents off a bus ticket counts, it is hard to see how a free bus pass in Malta would not. A mother in Genoa Italy has since become something of a regular in the Luxembourg court. Between 2017 and 2021, it lost four cases on the rights of single permit holders. They were over a family allowance, a ba- by bonus, the way it counted households and, yes, that su- permarket discount card. The first of them put paid to the notion that sparing long- term residents is enough to keep a government on the right side of the law. A mother in Genoa, Kerly Del Rosario Martinez Silva, a non-EU national, lived in the Ligurian city with her three children on a single work per- mit. In 2014, she applied to INPS, Italy's social security agency, for a family allowance paid to households with at least three children under 18. She was turned down. The allowance was kept for Ital- ians, EU citizens, refugees and long-term residents. A worker on a single permit didn't make the cut. The Genoa court sided with INPS. The Court of Appeal was less sure, and referred the case to the ECJ in Luxem- bourg. ĦALEY XUEREB hxuereb@mediatoday.com.mt Italy's case was over a supermarket discount card. cent off the weekly grocery run. And Italy lost the It seems that while one end of the government table was hard at work thinking up new fees for foreign workers, the other has yet to get round to the new rights it owes them