Malta is one of the few EU countries where road fatalities have increased since 2010, according to the latest road safety scoreboard issued in Brussels yesterday.

That year EU member states established the target of halving road fatalities by the end of the decade.

They are moving in the right direction. The EU as a whole has managed to bring down the number of road deaths by 17 per cent between 2010 and 2013, from 77 to 65 per million inhabitants. This means 9,000 lives have been saved in that period.

But Malta is moving in the opposite direction. Its figure for deadly road accidents stood at 36 per million inhabitants in 2010 but last year it went up to 54, a 50 per cent increase.

Brussels is not alarmed at the island’s big increase, as small numbers result in significant statistical fluctuations.

Another small member state saw a significant increase in the number of road fatalities – Luxembourg, the second smallest after Malta, registered a 36 per cent rise. The Grand Duchy has a much bigger road network than Malta, with high-speed motorways.

In the EU on the whole, the European Commission observed an impressive decline in the number of people killed on the roads last year. There were eight per cent fewer road fatalities than in 2012, following a nine per cent decrease between that year and 2011.

The Commission said this meant the EU was now in a good position to reach the strategic target of halving road deaths between 2010 and 2020.

However, 70 people are still dying on Europe’s roads every day.

The numbers vary greatly across the EU. The lowest figures were recorded in the UK, Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark while the highest were reported in Romania and Hungary.