Malta has not made any tangible progress on transparency of party funding in more than four years and a comprehensive legal framework for regulating political financing continued to be missing, the Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption (Greco), concluded in their second compliance report on Malta.

Greco said that none of the six recommendations addressed to the country in this area had been implemented satisfactorily or dealt with in a satisfactory manner.

“Under these circumstances, Greco has no choice but to consider the situation as globally unsatisfactory,” it said. It requested the head of Malta’s delegation to provide a report on the progress made in implementing recommendations as soon as possible, and, at the latest by June 30 June.

Greco also concluded that Malta implemented satisfactorily or dealt with in a satisfactory manner on only two of nine recommendations it had made in the Third Round Evaluation Report.

Greco noted that amendments to the Criminal Code met most of the concerns of three of its recommendations covering such issues as the criminalisation of bribery of domestic and foreign arbitrators and foreign jurors, an increase in the maximum penalty provided for the offence of trading in influence, and the introduction of more effective, proportionate and dissuasive penal sanctions for all bribery offences committed by judges.

The only issue that remained pending was ratification by Malta of the Additional Protocol to the Criminal Law Convention on Corruption. Greco urged the authorities to proceed with the ratification as soon as possible.

However, Greco said it was deeply concerned that four years since the adoption of the Evaluation Report, a comprehensive legal framework for regulating political financing continues to be missing in Malta.

It welcomes the priority attention accorded to the issue by the new government and fully supported the development of a draft Bill.

While acknowledging the progress made in elaborating the new legislation, it encouraged the authorities to pursue their efforts vigorously and to better align their draft legislation to the requirements of its recommendations.

“This can be done, in particular, by substantially reducing the threshold for disclosing donations provided to political parties introducing a ban on anonymous donations, developing additional rules on the presentation of annual statements of accounts by political parties to the Electoral Commission as well as their subsequent disclosure to the public, refining further the supervisory mandate of the Electoral Commission and considering the need to achieve further balance between criminal and administrative penalties provided for violation of the political funding rules,” Greco said.