Malta Ranks Second-To-Last In Press Freedom In The EU
The World Press Freedom Index has once again released its ranking and Malta placed a disappointing 73rd in the world and second-to-last in the European Union.
The island progressed by 11 places but the study attributed this mainly to the deterioration of the situation in other countries.
“The recommendations resulting from the public inquiry into the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia have not been implemented, while full justice has still not been served in this key case for the fight against impunity in Europe,” the study reads.
“The ruling majority has addressed neither the issues related to independence and sustainability of the media, nor to access to information and protection against SLAPPs. The media landscape continues to be deeply polarised. However, the recently adopted European Media Freedom Act brings hope for improvement even in Malta.”
Malta finds itself one place above Nepal and one below Andorra with an ultimate score of 60.96. Meanwhile, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden occupied the top three spots, respectively. While Eritrea, Syria, and Afghanistan found themselves in the last three, respectively.
Malta was identified as having a “problematic situation”, being one of only three EU member states to score badly on this scale. The only EU country that did worse was Greece at 88. Hungary got the third-lowest score at 67.
In the category titled political context, the island received a score of 45.35 which translated to a ranking of 99. The economic context, on the other hand, got a score of 49.57 at a ranking of 61. The legal context received a score of 60.1 and a ranking of 95, with a social context score of 61.9 and a ranking of 88. The overall safety received a score of 88 while it ranked 87.9.
The Maltese government has received major flack from newsrooms, NGOs, and the general public for the lack of recommendations implemented from the Daphne Caruana Galizia assassination inquiry. The inquiry was published almost three years ago.
The government further received other anti-corruption recommendations including those issued by Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) – only four out of 23 of these have been implemented so far.
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