Malta will be getting €800,000 added to its coffers after a surplus was registered in last year's EU budget.

Any unspent funds by the Commission or EU institutions have to be reimbursed to member states proportionally and in 2008 the EU registered a surplus of 1.5 per cent of its budget.

Last year, Malta contributed €60.6 million towards EU coffers and received €65.6 million in EU funds under various programmes and initiatives.

Giving details of last year's EU budget, Commissioner Dalia Grybauskaite said that, last year, member states' contributions almost exactly matched the agreed spending for the year.

"With just over 1.5 per cent of the overall EU budget unspent, the high implementation rate of funds has left another record low surplus, reflecting effective budgetary management," she said.

The end-of-year surplus - the difference between all EU budget revenue and spending - amounted to €1.79 billion of the total €115.771 billion budget in 2008.

Ms Grybauskaite said consistently high levels of budget execution were easing the pressure on national finances and underlined the particular importance of tight budgetary management in difficult economic times.

"Every single euro paid into the EU budget counts and the low level of leftover funds in 2008 demonstrates how money did not lie idle," she said.

This year, Malta was expected to receive more funds than it contributed because the various multi-million euro projects benefiting from the 2007-2013 EU budget allocation were expected to reach implementation phase.