Malta has emerged as one of the best performers in the management of EU funds, absorbing 91 per cent of its budget for 2000-2006, which totalled €88.7 million.
The island outperformed all the other member states that joined the EU in 2004 and managed to do better than some of the older member states such as Spain, Greece, France and Italy, which have decades of experience in managing EU-funded projects.
The details emerged in Brussels yesterday as Regional Policy Commissioner Danuta Hubner gave figures on how the 27 member states are managing their funding allocations.
The overall best performers for the 2000-2006 period were Germany, Austria and Finland, which have so far managed to receive payments for 95 per cent of their allocation.
On the other hand, Bulgaria emerged as the worst performer utilising just 40 per cent of its allocated budget. Cyprus, which is normally compared to Malta by the EU, managed to get its hands on 71 per cent of the allocated funds so far.
"Malta is showing it has managed to learn the ropes of a complicated and highly bureaucratic system very well and is performing much above its weight," an EU official said.
According to EU rules, member states have until mid-2009 to receive payments related to the structural fund budget of 2000-2006, covering four separate financial programmes, and until the end of next year to get cohesion fund payments, normally related to highly intensive infrastructural projects.
Last year, Malta received about €50 million from EU coffers for various ongoing projects covering budgetary periods 2000-2006 and 2007-2013.
The current seven-year period will see an injection of €855 million of EU funds into the economy. Following submissions by the government last August, Brussels gave the green light for the implementation of the first 33 projects financed using €164 million of EU money. The projects include the restoration of all the historic bastions and fortifications of the Maltese islands (€32.2 million), upgrading two coastal stretches in Sliema and Qawra (€4 million) and building and equipping a state-of-the-art ICT faculty at the Tal-Qroqq University campus (€13 million), among others.
The tendering process for the projects is under way while other projects are being identified for submission to the European Commission.