Proposals which would forbid high-ranking public officials from accepting jobs with private firms in the sectors they dealt with in prior years prompted lively debate in Parliament on Tuesday evening.
Opposition MP Karol Aquilina said that the Court of Appeals had already established that such “revolving door” provisions in the private sector were illegal. The problem was one which urgently needed to be tackled, he said, but not by imposing such conditions.
Parliamentary Secretary Julia Farrugia Portelli disputed that argument. “Revolving door” clauses in contracts were reasonable and voluntary, she said, and although a decision by the Court of Magistrates had decided against them, that decision was later overturned by a Court of Appeals. One needed only to speak to private sector workers to find out how common such clauses actually were, she added, and many other countries had even more restrictive provisions in force.
A Public Administration Bill being debated in Parliament would bar high-ranking public servants for two years from accepting jobs with companies with which they would have had dealings in the prior five years. An ad-hoc board would be established in order to…
