A report by the Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights has welcomed the reforms undertaken to improve the effectiveness and speed of Maltese justice.

However, such action must not be at the expense of protection of the individual's rights, the report said, amid a repeated recommendation to consider recruiting more judges and magistrates.

In his 2003 report, the commissioner had recommended adopting appropriate measures to reduce the backlog in the courts, particularly the civil courts, and ensure proper administration of justice.

In the criminal sphere, various changes have been made to facilitate or speed up case handling, the CoE notes in its follow-up report.

For example, the length of jury trials has gone down thanks to better session management and more systematic use of computerisation.

The practice of automatically transcribing all the evidence in a criminal file for the purpose of an appeal has now been dropped, and such transcription is only carried out at the request of one of the parties.

In addition, conversion of certain unpaid fines into prison sentences no longer requires the intervention of a judge or a magistrate. These recent changes have speeded up certain proceedings and kept the case backlog from increasing.

In civil litigation, the Maltese authorities have overhauled the workings of the court system, though without recruiting any more judges or magistrates.

The report says that the reforms have however not achieved any substantial reduction in the length of civil proceedings with nearly 10 per cent having been pending for over 10 years.

At the time of the follow-up visit, last November, over 12,600 civil cases were pending before the Maltese civil courts.

Turning to the prison conditions, the delegation from the Commissioner's Office found the situation at Corradino quite satisfactory with relatively new premises, clean and well-equipped cells.

However the situation of prisoners requiring special attention remained unchanged, in spite of the fact that the prison had nearly 100 places available. This small group of prisoners lives separately from the other prisoners, in a kind of community where only a few of them have opportunities to work.

The commissioner welcomes the signature and ratification of the Revised Social Charter and of nearly all of its articles. He urged the Maltese authorities to do likewise regarding the Third Protocol to the European Social Charter providing for a system of collective complaints, which must be seen not just as an international instrument but also as a useful tool for negotiation and dialogue with society and trade unions.