Malta has once again received a negative assessment from the European Commission, which found that the country had made no progress on several long-standing rule-of-law reforms and only limited progress in tackling high-level corruption, protecting journalists and opening the legislative process to public scrutiny.
The Commission’s 2026 Rule of Law Report, published on 17 July, examines the justice system, anti-corruption framework, media freedom and institutional checks and balances in every EU member state. The Commission describes the annual report as a central pillar of the EU’s rule-of-law architecture and a tool for identifying problems before they become entrenched.
At EU level, Brussels has strengthened the legal machinery available to confront these failures. The European Media Freedom Act now regulates areas including public-service broadcasting, media ownership, state advertising and the protection of journalistic sources. The anti-SLAPP Directive creates minimum safeguards against abusive cross-border lawsuits intended to silence journalists and civil-society activists. A separate Anti-Corruption Directive entered into force on 31 May 2026, obliging member states to modernise their criminal laws and strengthen the prevention, detection and punishment of corruption.
On the other hand, Malta failed to address most of its pending rule-of-law issues, with failure to open the choice of the Chief Justice to wider scrutiny, no progress on improving the efficiency of the Courts and no progress towards establishing a convincing record of final judgments in corruption cases. It recorded only limited progress on high-level corruption investigations, protections for journalists, access to official documents and public participation in law-making. The Government also registered no progress on creating a National Human Rights Institution compliant with international standards.
The report also noted the lengthy-times undertaken before judgement is handed by the Courts. First-instance civil and commercial cases took an estimated 491 days in 2024—the fourth-longest period in the EU. Ordinary criminal cases reached 862 days, while serious criminal proceedings took an extraordinary 3,977 days, or almost 11 years—the worst figure in the European Union. Administrative cases took more than four and a half years, also the longest period in the bloc.
The clearance rate for serious criminal cases collapsed to just 22.4%, meaning that the courts concluded fewer than one case for every four entering the system. More than 300 constitutional cases were still pending by October 2025. Although preliminary government figures suggest some improvement during 2025, the Commission’s formal verdict remained unchanged: Malta had made no further progress in reducing the length of proceedings.
Public confidence has followed the same downward path. Only 47% of Maltese respondents considered judicial independence fairly or very good in 2026, down sharply from 69% a year earlier.
The Permanent Commission Against Corruption remains a largely toothless institution operating with only three part-time members. It received no corruption reports, established no corrupt practice and transmitted no findings to the Attorney General for prosecution during the reporting period. The Commission also warned that reforms to ministerial and parliamentary declarations of assets and interests remained outstanding, while effective measures were still required to control corruption risks in public procurement and planning.
Malta was also one of only six EU countries scoring below 50 in the Corruption Perceptions Index cited by the Commission, registering 49 points alongside Slovakia, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary.
You can read the full report here.
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