Justice in Malta: improving but still lagging

The European Commission published this week the annual Justice Scoreboard and the government went overboard praising the improvements registered.

A detailed look at the Scoreboard shows that indeed progress was registered in many areas but there are still other areas where Malta still lags behind other Member States.

The one statistic that hit me, one which lies directly at the government’s door, is Figure 38, General Government Total Expenditure on the Law Courts where Malta is in the lower half of the table, at 0.3% of GDP.

Malta is also the fourth from bottom country with regards to the percentage of judges in the population, with only Denmark, Ireland and the UK being worse.

Malta is then the worst country in the EU where female judges in the second instance courts are considered.

On the other hand, Malta is the sixth country with regards to the number of lawyers in the country.

The government based its optimistic reading of the Scoreboard mainly on the statistics regarding caseload processing . Malta had the lowest amount of incoming civil, commercial, administrative and other cases in 2016.

But then the time consumed to resolve the civil, commercial, administrative and other cases stood at around 400 days. This is far better than the 800 days registered in 2010 but still the longest in the EU, except Cyprus.

In 2010, Malta registered the highest time needed to resolve litigious civil and commercial cases, at over 800 days. These have now been brought down to a more manageable level of justover 400 days but this is still the highest in the EU, except Italy.

Again, as regards administrative cases, in 2010 Malta registered the highest time to solve such cases, with more than 2,500 days. This has now been brought down to just under 1500 days but even here Malta is still the highest in the EU, except for Cyprus.

At the other end of the scale, Malta registered the lowest amount of EU trademark infringement cases.

With regards to money laundering, Malta registered the fourth highest average length of court cases in 2016.