Malta had only 62 pending EU internal market directives to transpose into Maltese law, amounting to just 3.9 per cent of all EU laws published until mid-November.

Sources close to the Commission, who are monitoring the progress made by member states in this area, expressed their satisfaction that Malta is making a huge effort in this regard and has completely changed its position in the internal market scoreboard being compiled. The new scoreboard will be made public by the Commission in January.

According to the scoreboard published in Brussels last July, Malta ranked last among European Union countries in transposing the EU's internal market legislation. The scoreboard showed that until the end of May, Malta still had 617 directives to transpose.

However, the situation has now changed completely. Commission sources told The Times that they had immediately noticed a change in attitude from the Maltese Ministry for Competitiveness and Communications, which is responsible for the transposition of the laws. This resulted in a strong effort to minimise the backlog.

The transposition of EU directives into national legislation is considered a delicate process. It includes consultation with all the affected entities and the publication of a legal notice in the Government Gazette. It is at this stage that an EU directive becomes Maltese law.

In its last report, the European Commission said that apart from the new member states, some long-standing member states still had a transposition deficit. Of the 'old' members, France had the most directives still to be transposed, followed by Greece, Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries. Denmark had the least.