Malta has re-asserted its place as one of the European Union’s best performer in the 28th edition of the Internal Market Scoreboard issued by the European Commission on 17 July 2014.  In fact Malta recorded, for the second consecutive time only two outstanding transpositions, which puts it in second place amongst Member States.  Malta’s transposition deficit is therefore just two Directives short of a 0% deficit which is considered a perfect score.

The Scoreboard benchmarks Member States’ efforts in the implementation of Internal Market Law by recording the transposition deficit, which is the gap between the number of Internal Market laws adopted at EU level and those in force in the Member States. It takes into account all notifications of Directives relating to the Internal Market with a transposition deadline of 30 April 2014. 

Malta’s transposition deficit stands at 0.2% which is significantly below both the EU average (0.7%) and the deficit target set by the Member States (1%).   The Scoreboard also places Malta as the member state which takes the least time in transposing EU measures, where a previous average delay of 19.2 months in the previous edition was reduced drastically by 15.6 months to just 3.6 months. 

Another notable indicator registered in the report is that Malta continues to be one of the EU Member States with the fewest pending infringement proceedings concerning the single market, where it has placed second among all Member States with only eleven pending cases.

With regards to the two outstanding transpositions it is pertinent to note that one of the Directives was fully transposed last June while the other Directive is in an advanced transposition stage. 

The report is further confirmation of Malta’s deep commitment to the Single Market in view of the beneficial effect this has in terms of enabling Maltese individuals, consumers and businesses to make the most of the opportunities offered to them by having direct access to 27 other Member States and over 600 million people.