Another positive result for Malta

The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for European Affairs and Implementation of the Electoral Manifesto announced that Malta has maintained its first place among European Union member states in the Single Market Scoreboard by having the best record in transposing European Legislation.

The scoreboard, released by the European Commission, measures the performance of the various member states’ efforts in implementing Single Market Law, by recording the transposition deficit adopted at EU level and in each member state.

Malta has managed to reduce the number of overdue directives by half to 0.2%, when compared with the previous scoreboard published in October 2015. Malta’s performance contrasts with an EU average of 0.7%.

According to the scoreboard report, Malta successfully closed the only two pending directives it had. These related to the Solvency II Directive and to a Directive amend- ing the Insurance Rules, both of which were of a very complex nature.

The Commission reported that Malta’s performance in closing pending transpositions effectively and in a timely manner, was above the EU average and is an excellent score.

Malta also did extremely well on the time it took to transpose pending directives, achieving an average seven months, compared with the EU average of 10 months. Malta also recorded the lowest compliance deficit, reaching 0.1% versus 0.7% elsewhere, making it the best performing member state on this issue.

Commenting on the result, Deputy Prime Minister Louis Grech said that the result demonstrated the importance that Malta attaches to timely and effective transposition of European legislation. “It reflects the priority that the Maltese government gives to the transposition of directives, particularly those that relate to the Single Market,” he added.