Malta ranked third in the list of infringements among the 12 new member states and by the end of last year the European Commission had opened 91 files implicating Malta in some kind of breach against EU law.
Such investigations do not necessarily mean Malta had in fact violated the law because some issues are normally resolved without further proceedings.
According to the 2007 annual report on the monitoring and application of community law, published in Brussels, by the end of last year, Malta was sent formal notices in 67 cases, a reasoned opinion on 29 others and was referred to the European Court of Justice on two issues.
The EU's legal procedures are divided into three different stages giving ample time to member states to make the necessary changes requested by Brussels before reaching the ECJ stage.
Normally, member states are first sent a formal letter notifying them of the infringement and the changes necessary. This is then followed by a Reasoned Opinion, giving legal interpretation to the infringement, which will lead to a court referral if the member state involved continues to delay implementing the necessary changes.
According to the 2007 report, out of the 12 new member states, Poland and the Czech Republic had the major number of infringement files opened, 147 and 105 respectively. However, overall, Italy topped the list of infringement cases with 332 infringement files pending.
An EU official explained that although Malta's number of pending infringement files seemed high when compared to the other new member states, the situation was not very worrying because many of Malta's issues were resolved in the first stage of infringement procedures.
The official said that it is only on certain serious issues, such as the one on spring hunting, that Malta decided to go all the way to the ECJ. In the majority of cases, Malta conforms to the demands by Brussels and the issue is then closed.
Out of the 91 pending files as of the end of last year, 44 were connected to the lack of notification by Maltese authorities on the transposition of directives into national law books. Fifteen cases involved bad application of EU directives and another 14 involved a breach of EU regulations under the EU treaties.
According to the sources, many of the issues still pending by the end of last year had been closed by the commission this year following corrective action by the Maltese government.