I refer to the online report on March 30, which makes reference to an EU justice scoreboard.

One significant statistic that emerges from the relevant report is that the number of judges and magistrates in Malta per 100,000 of the population is considerably lower than the average number of judges and magistrates per 100,000 of population in EU member States. In fact, the average number of judges and magistrates per 100,000 of population in EU member countries stands at 18.9 while the comparable number in Malta is just 9.3, or 50 per cent less than the EU average.

Therefore, while better case management is certainly to be welcomed as a way to expedite the processing of court cases, it is hardly reasonable to expect that this alone is likely to increase the rate of disposal of court cases to the same levels as those in other EU member States unless the complement of the judiciary is also increased to the same levels obtaining in those States.