John Dalli, flanked by his lawyers, enters the blue-carpeted chamber of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg and faces a panel of five black-robed judges.
It is July 2014 – almost two years after an explosive meeting with European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso which ended Dalli’s EU career.
Barroso – the man he blames for unjustly destroying his reputation – is standing an arm’s length away.
The two men had not seen each other since their last encounter on the 13th floor of the commission HQ in Brussels.
Dalli’s voice cracked as he spoke of what he calls a sacking. Barroso, he said, had no legal basis to force him out of office. He wants the commission to pay him €1.9 million in material damages.
He claims that Barroso forced him to resign – a gentleman’s euphemism for “pack up your things and get out”. “I asked him [Barroso] to give me the possibility to consult a lawyer, to get some sort of legal advice … I asked for 24 hours. He looked at his watch and he said ‘I’ll give you 30 minutes’,” he told the EU judges. “It was not a meeting. It was an ambush.”
Barroso told the judges that Dalli agreed to resign because he had become politically untenable.
Nikolaj Nielsen