The Government is exploring ways to make it easier for people to redeem the ground rent on their properties due to an “enormous backlog” caused mostly by bureaucracy.
Speaking in Brussels, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said the Government was being deprived of an important revenue stream because of working practices within the department that processed such requests.
Dr Muscat said he was looking into ways of offering incentives, including financial ones, for people in the sector to voluntarily speed up work and adopt better work practices.
He made the announcement when asked how he planned to make the court system more efficient. He said on Thursday that the productivity levels of some judges and magistrates were “unacceptable”.
“I believe in motivation rather than punitive measures,” he said, before comparing the court system to redeeming ground rent.
Dr Muscat kept up the pressure on the justice system, saying he did not want to face the public five years from now without any improvement in the law courts.
It was an “advantage” that the EU listed the justice system in Malta’s country-specific recommendations approved at this week’s EU summit because this showed the problem was not just a matter of perception.
He said those who got used to the system were resistant to change but the citizens demanded a fresh approach. Dr Muscat said recent studies had shown how much vacation leave had to be taken for people to attend court and this did not include those who were self-employed.
“This all comes at a cost to the economy,” he said, adding that a similar study should eventually be carried out on the cost of traffic. Asked about the implementation of this year’s Budget and plans for the next one, Dr Muscat said the Government was taking all the necessary steps to bring the deficit below the three per cent of GDP threshold but he did not like making predictions.
The European Commission, which insisted on placing Malta under an excessive deficit procedure, is predicting a deficit of 3.7 per cent.
On the second day of the summit, which discussed European economic and monetary union, Dr Muscat said Malta was pushing for a “common sense” approach to the current EU-wide discussion on centralisation.
One of the crucial discussions during the summit was whether EU member states should move towards stronger fiscal integration to battle the economic challenges or allow stricter sovereignty.
While there had to be common standards, rules and leadership in the EU, Dr Muscat said countries could not all be placed in a straitjacket.
“We are open to scrutiny. We are open to taking recommendations. But we are not open to taking direction,” he said, stressing that budgets should be decided by the elected governments of each country.
“We cannot accept a situation where decisions are not taken in Malta,” he added.
The Prime Minister said this was the most “pro-business” summit he had attended so far and EU leaders recognised the importance of SMEs in tackling unemployment.
Malta’s best chance for economic growth was through investment coming from outside Europe, he noted.
Dr Muscat, who will be in Zagreb to mark Croatia’s EU accession on Monday, said Malta would restrict freedom of movement to Croatian citizens for the first two years of membership, as happened when Bulgaria and Romania joined. “We cannot open our doors so widely immediately. This is a prudent way of moving forward,” he said.