When justice delayed is justice denied

It has come as no surprise that the European Commission has expressed displeasure at the Maltese justice system. It is a concern which this newspaper and many Maltese citizens themselves have complained about over a very long period.

What was shocking was the scale and depth of Malta’s abysmal performance compared with the justice systems in other countries.

The EU’s “Justice Scoreboard” ranks member states on a number of criteria affecting the administration of justice. In relation to the length of time it takes for non-criminal court cases to be resolved, Malta was bottom, by some distance, when it came to dealing with administrative cases, as well as litigious civil and commercial cases.

On average, it found that Maltese civil cases take about 850 days to resolve, compared with 50 in Lithuania and around 300 in Spain.

When it comes to the size of the judiciary, Malta, which has an impressive 290 lawyers to every 100,000 inhabitants, has only nine judges per 100,000 people – proportionally smaller than any other member state of the Union.

The lack of resources devoted to justice in Malta is also highlighted, with Malta ranking in the bottom six with expenditure of just €25 per head of population going on the law courts.

Fortunately, the Government’s embarrassment over this depressing but realistic external assessment of Malta’s judicial system can be assuaged by its ability to point the finger at the previous administration, and the fact it had clearly signalled the need for improvement with the establishment of a Judicial Reform Commission within a few days of taking office.

The Judicial Reform Commission is already up and running under the leadership of the energetic retired judge Vanni Bonello. It is to report before the end of the year with a plan for reforming Malta’s courts and judicial processes. While it is likely that the EU Commission’s demand for an action plan to be in place before the end of the year will not be met in its entirety, the Government hopes to get the process of change underway possibly as early as the summer once the preliminary findings of the Commission are to hand.

Dr Bonello, who is supported by a competent team, is unlikely to pull any punches in his examination of the state of Malta’s judicial system. The shortcomings of the system are well known and will be fairly easy to identify.

The trick which the Commission must try to pull off is to match its analysis of the problem to practical, workable, low-cost, nationally affordable solutions.

The latter point is especially pertinent. Malta’s current economic circumstances constrain what the Government can do. The priority of achieving a balanced budget, the prospects of slower national growth and other inescapable factors mean that the amount of funding available to make improvements in the administration of justice will inevitably be limited.

Without this realisation, the Reform Commission’s report will simply find itself consigned to the Government’s pending tray.

While some extra expenditure may prove necessary, for example on improving the terms and conditions of service of the judiciary and the magistracy, in providing proper training resources for judges and magistrates and greatly enhancing the administrative support for the law courts, the Commission must focus its efforts on improvements.

Key to this is efficiency and effectiveness – so far as possible doing more, or differently, with the same human and financial resources – if it is to produce a viable, realistic and workable reform programme.