Malta is among the EU's worst performers when it comes to Open Data maturity, a new report has found. 

The report, published by the European Data Portal, found that only Latvia and Liechtenstein have done less to promote Open Data and develop national portal features. 

Open Data is the idea that some data should be free to use and republish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control. Examples of Open Data public sector initiatives include the UK's data.gov.uk platform or the USA's Open Government Initiative. 

The report found that although Malta has a National Data Strategy in the pipeline - a draft was presented last July - it still has no Open Data policy in place or an Open Data portal. 

It found that many countries had made progress in showing the political, social and economic impact of Open Data, and noted that 20 out of 28 EU countries had an Open Data policy in place. Many countries had also made progress in making data easily available through an Open Data portal. 

According to the report, Spain and France are the EU's frontrunners, followed by the Netherlands, Austria, the United Kingdom, Bulgaria and Finland. Ireland, the Czech Republic, Luxembourg and Slovakia made the most progress in 2016.