It is rather unfortunate that when ministers or government officials report on reports by international organisations, such as the EU, they tend to give their take on the report in question but they do not, as a rule, provide the link to the report in question.

The public is thus left in the dark as to what the report itself says unless it relies on synopsis as such as provided by the minister.

This is the case with the Justice Scoreboard published by the EU on Monday. As reported by this and by other media Justice Minister Owen Bonnici gathered the media and basically self-congratulated himself on the positive things that emerge from the report such as that the courts have increased their efficiency. To be fair, the minister also pointed out that according to the report, Malta is the worst performing country when it comes to the relationship between the courts and the media.

Let us go through the Scoreboard, the actual document and point out some salient points.

Malta has the least incoming civil, commercial, administrative and other cases.

Malta is at the lower end of countries as regards the number of incoming civil and commercial litigious cases, though in Malta’s case, the number of such cases has rather increased from 2010.

As for the time needed to resolve civil, commercial and administrative cases, Malta is still very much at the top end of the EU scale at the fourth highest country although the caseload has been drastically cut down from 2010 till now.

Malta is likewise very much near the top – the bad – of the EU league when it comes to time needed to resolve litigious civil and commercial cases. Malta is third bottom, surpassed only by Cyprus and Italy although again there has been a huge improvement over the recent years.

There was a time when Malta was way out of comparison for the time needed to resolve administrative cases. This has now been drastically cut and Malta is now almost on the same level of most EU countries.

Malta is one of the few countries where with regards to the rate of resolving civil, commercial, administrative and other cases: more cases are resolved than come in.

Malta is the EU champion when it comes to the rate of resolving administrative cases.

Malta is doing quite well as regards the number of other pending civil, commercial and administrative cases.

It is likewise doing well as regards the number of pending litigious civil and commercial cases.

And it is doing even better as regards pending administrative cases.

There follow a number of tables regarding efficiency in specific areas of law eg as regards consumer protection.

With regards to length of money laundering cases Malta’s figures are unfortunately not shown.

Malta lags behind as regards the availability of online information about the judicial system for the general public.

As regards court fees to start a judicial proceeding in a specific consumer case, Malta is on the low side .

Malta’s system is doing quite well when it comes to monitoring the stages of a proceeding but no so much when it comes to transmitting summons.

As regards the use of ICT between courts and lawyers, Malta does well as regards communication by the courts and the lawyers, but not vice-versa – eg electronic signature of documents and for submissions to court.

With regards to relations between the courts and the media, Malta, at the bottom of the EU heap, ticks only one box – that which says that “the judiciary has established guidelines for communication with the press/media for judges. The rest is completely absent – there is no official who explains judicial decisions to the press/media as there is in many other countries.

On the contrary Malta is along with the best countries when it comes to the availability of allowing access to judgments to the general public.

Malta then tops the league where it comes to consumer complaints to cross border on the ODR platform.

Having said that, Malta is among the lower range of countries and the resources given to them by the government and there has also been a reduction between 2014 and 2015.

The same goes for general government expenditure on law courts.

Malta is the fourth-lowest country for the number of judges in proportion to the residents of Malta but then Malta is the country with the biggest increase in women judges from 2010 to 2015.

At the same time Malta is the fourth highest country with regards to the number of lawyers as related to the population.

There are other details, so in order to give readers the full and transparent information, this is the link to the whole report: http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/document.cfm?doc_id=43918