Malta emerged in pole position together with Denmark in an internal market scoreboard that followed member states' performance to transpose EU directives into national law books.
The island had just three pending directives (0.2 per cent) to adopt by the beginning of May, according to the European Commission's twice-yearly scoreboard.
"Malta is by far our best performer from among the new member states and together with Denmark is the overall best performer in the entire EU," a Commission official said.
"This is a remarkable result considering the fact that in the first years of its accession Malta was among our worst performers. It now seems Malta has found the right mechanism to implement the directives approved by the EU Council and Parliament as fast as it can," the official added.
According to an agreement reached by EU leaders two years ago, member states had to keep their transposition deficit not higher than one per cent by the end of this year.
According to the scoreboard, Italy, Greece and Portugal were among the worst performers with a substantial number of EU directives still pending transposition.
Correct transposition is considered of utmost importance by the EU.
The latest scoreboard singles out Malta as one of the best member states that managed to reduce its infringement case load over the past two years.
According to the Commission, from May 2007 to date Malta managed to conclude and close the number of legal actions against it for incorrect transposition by 22 per cent, one of the highest scores in the EU.
Brussels said that until May, Malta still had 28 pending infringement cases, the majority concerning incorrect transposition of directives.
The worst EU law offender in May was Italy with 110 pending infringement cases, followed by Spain and Greece with 96 and 88 pending legal actions respectively.
Malta was in a better position than most member states, which, on average, had a total of 47 legal cases opened against them by the European Commission, which acts as the guardian of EU treaties.
Commenting on the latest scoreboard results, Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy said that in the challenging times it was more important than ever that the internal market functioned as effectively as possible.
"National laws need to be of high quality and those applying the rules need to do it correctly. There are still too many instances of member states failing in this regard. The internal market must be allowed to play its role in returning the European economy to growth as quickly as possible," Mr McCreevy said.