Malta is one of just three countries in western Europe to improve their score in The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index, just issued, although it remains ranked 13.

The other two European countries to improve their scores are Finland and Germany.

Malta is 13th among the 21 Western European countries, with Norway, Iceland and Sweden leading the pack and Malta just behind Germany, the UK and Austria but ahead of Spain, Portugal, France and Italy.

Three European countries saw a deterioration in their overall scores: Turkey, Italy and Austria. All other scores stagnated. Once again, none of western Europe's “flawed democracies” — Italy, Portugal, France, Belgium, Cyprus and Greece — moved into the “full democracy” category.

In the global table on political participation, protest and democracy Malta is 18th out of 20 countries classified as full democracies, one down from last year when Malta had also seen a slight deterioration of its points tally following the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia and questions about the country's rule of law.

The index rates 167 countries by 60 indicators across five broad categories: electoral process and pluralism, the functioning of government, political participation, democratic political culture and civil liberties.

The policies of Italy's anti-immigrant and anti-establishment government which came to power last June torpedoed the country's global democracy ranking.

The country dropped from 21st to 33rd position in the Economist Intelligence Unit's 2018 Democracy Index, mainly because of the presence of the far-right League in Italy's coalition.