Malta reached an all-time low on Transparency International’s latest version of the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI).
With a score of 46 out of 100, this is also the first time Malta failed to scrape a pass mark since the country first featured on the index in 2012.
Malta now ranks 65th out of a total of 180 countries and territories across the world.
In a press release accompanying publication of the CPI, the Daphne Foundation highlighted how Malta’s score dropped by 14 points since 2015.
This places Malta significantly below the Western Europe and EU regional average of 64 out of 100.
Click here for a larger version of this data chart
In its regional analysis, Transparency International sounds the alarm about Europe’s declining average. This average declined across the board for the second year in a row.
“Major economies like Germany (CPI score: 75) and France (67) are declining, and even traditionally strong Nordic countries such as Norway (81) and Sweden (80) have recorded their lowest ever scores,” the NGO’s EU advisors note.
Malta’s festering corruption issues were duly picked up on by the authors of the annual report.
“Others like Slovakia (49), Malta (46) and Hungary (41) have dropped as the rule of law breaks down. Of the 31 countries assessed, only six improved their scores, while 19 declined,” the report adds.
Malta sits above just three other countries at the bottom end of the European scoresheet: Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary.
Source: Transparency International
Flora Cresswell, one of the authors of the EU analysis, refers to “integrity loopholes” and “weaknesses in public contracting” as Europe’s most persistent corruption problems. Europe’s political shift to the far right has been accompanied by systemic attempts at undermining the rule of law.
The easiest way to undermine the rule of law is to ensure politicians are not held accountable for their actions, including by amending legislation to shield public officials from scrutiny, for example.
Besides carving out “integrity loopholes”, another key aspect of European corruption revolves around dubious public procurement practices.
This website recently published an investigation identifying such weaknesses in Malta’s public procurement system. A company partly owned by an individual convicted of a sex offence, Marvin Buttigieg, made millions of euros in direct orders and contracts from the Gozo ministry.
The elements of that investigation expose a known fact: that the Labour Party has been abusing Malta’s public procurement laws to reward its enablers since it first swept to power in 2013.
In fact, the infamous hospitals concession case earned Malta another dubious mention from the authors of the regional report.
“In Malta, the former prime minister, and former ministers and officials, are currently facing criminal charges relating to corruption concerning the transfer of three public hospitals to a private company in a deal estimated at €4 billion,” the report states, referring to disgraced former prime minister Joseph Muscat and his former associates embroiled in the scandal.
One of the key solutions proposed in the analysis accompanying the CPI is a broad, anti-corruption EU directive that would standardise national legislation, presumably in the hopes of minimising the kind of domestic interference that usually accompanies the prosecution of public officials in corrupt countries like Malta.
In a section summarising its findings, the authors of the report attribute the decline of rule of law in Europe to “leaders’ hollow efforts”, noting that “anti-corruption efforts are falling short”.
“This is hindering the region’s response to the climate crisis and other challenges, like fraying rule of law and overstrained public services,” the summary adds.
The creeping decline in democratic integrity was also visible beyond Europe’s borders. The full version of the report notes that, since 2012, just 32 countries have shown a trend of overall improvement. 47 countries have shown a notable overall decline, while the rest (101) remained more or less the same.
The full report goes into great detail about the impact of public procurement corruption on the fight against climate change, providing details about how climate funding is exploited by bad actors, the devastating impact of weakening legal protection of the environment, and the threats faced by climate activists.
The annual publication of the CPI is carried out by aggregating data from different sources that provide perceptions among businesspeople and relevant experts about the level of public sector corruption in their country.
You can download a copy by clicking here.