July traffic surpasses the 700,000 mark for first time in airport’s history
Malta officially confirmed as the 22nd EU-Member State to join the EPPO
July ended with 756,356 passenger movements at Malta International Airport, establishing a new traffic record hot on the heels of the company’s announcement that it is expecting almost 6.8 million passengers by the end of 2018.
Translating into an increase of 12.1 per cent over the same month last year, July’s total surpassed the previous record held by August 2017 by more than 62,000 passenger movements.
Last month’s upswing in passengers was observed in parallel with an 11.3 per cent increase in aircraft movements and a rise of 11.5 per cent in seat capacity. Malta Airport’s 100-destination summer schedule did in no small part contribute to July’s strong performance.
Moreover, with holiday season in full swing, July hit the highest seat load factor (SLF) for the year so far at 87.1 per cent.
Malta International Airport’s top five markets have remained unchanged since April, with the United Kingdom occupying the top spot followed by Italy, Germany, France and Spain.
While four of the top markets registered growth that ranged between 14.4 per cent and 34.3 per cent, Germany’s passenger movements decreased by 4.3 per cent. This decrease resulted from a reduced schedule by TUI cruises, affecting the cruise and fly passenger traffic throughput. Malta was officially confirmed as the 22nd member of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office on Tuesday. The EPPO is an independent and decentralised prosecution office of the European Union with competence for investigating, prosecuting and bringing to justice crimes against the EU budget, such as fraud, corruption or cross-border VAT fraud above €10 million.
The European Public Prosecutor’s Office will operate as a single office across participating Member States and will combine European and national law-enforcement efforts in a unified, seamless and efficient approach.
As matters stand the existing EU bodies – OLAF (the European Anti-Fraud Office), Eurojust (the European Agency for criminal justice cooperation) and Europol (the European Police Office) – cannot conduct criminal investigations or prosecute fraud cases.
OLAF can only refer the results of its administrative investigations to the competent national authorities which then decide independently whether or not to initiate criminal proceedings based on OLAF’s findings.
Moreover, national law enforcement efforts are fragmented across Member States, which do not always take the action required to tackle crimes against the EU budget. Today, only around 50% of the judicial recommendations transferred by OLAF to the national prosecution authorities lead to an indictment. The indictment rates vary considerably among Member States.
Also, the low number of prosecutions is accompanied by low recovery rates of amounts lost to fraud. Fraudsters targeting the EU budget or setting up complex VAT fraud, costing every year at least EUR 50 billion of revenues to national budgets, know that they have a good chance of keeping the proceeds of their crimes, banking on a lack of consistent enforcement efforts in the EU.
Currently, only national authorities can conduct criminal investigations and prosecute fraud against the Union’s financial interests. But their powers stop at national borders. Crimes against the EU budget are often complex. They involve several actors, complicated and elaborate fraud schemes, various countries and different national jurisdictions. Moreover, successful investigations of fraud require an in-depth understanding of the relevant legal and administrative framework.
Effective cooperation between Member States is difficult due to the different criminal law systems, unclear jurisdiction, timeconsuming legal assistance procedures, language problems, lack of resources and varying priorities.
This may result in fraud against the EU budget being regarded nationally as time- and personnel-consuming. As a result, such fraud may not be tackled at all or cases might be dropped as soon as difficulties appear. In some cases, national authorities may decide to only investigate ‘their’ national part of a crime, disregarding the potentially much wider implications of a fraud scheme.