Malta has managed to reduce the number of infringement procedures against it for breach of EU rules by 60 per cent in just six months.

It now has only 17 outstanding infringement procedures, just over half the average in the EU.

The latest EU Internal Market Scoreboard also shows that when it comes to the transposition of EU directives into national law books, Malta only has two pending. This puts the island in pole position with Latvia.

“For the eighth consecutive time, Malta has managed to top the internal market scoreboard, which is one of the most important barometers to evaluate how member states are implementing EU rules and giving new tools to their citizens,” a European Commission spokesman said.

According to EU practice, member states have two years to transpose directives into their law books from the date they are published in the EU journal. The EU executive normally starts an infringement procedure against those member states that do not manage to complete the transposition on time.

The scoreboard, a six-monthly measure of the performance of member states in this area, shows that by last May, two-year-old directives still pending among the 27 member states stood at an average of 0.9 per cent of all directives. Malta had the best record with just 0.1 per cent.

The EU report states that “Malta confirmed its leading position for the eighth consecutive time.”

On an EU level, the scoreboard shows that by last May, Italy and Greece had the biggest number of outstanding infringement procedures, at 69 and 68 respectively.

The most “obedient” member state was Latvia with just seven outstanding infringements.

By next month, all member states have to transpose another 25 directives.