Maltese trust their government more and their legal system less than EU average

Just over a third of Maltese people expressed trust in the legal system, an Eurobarometer survey found. Only 35 per cent of Maltese people felt trust in the justice and legal system, compared with the 50 per cent in EU countries who said they “tended” to trust the legal institutions. The survey was conducted in November, after the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. At the time of the survey, which carried out 503 face-to-face interviews, no one had yet been charged with her murder. The assassination and June’s general election were likely to have had an impact on the responses, the survey noted. Fifty-eight per cent of respondents in Malta expressed satisfaction with the way democracy works in the country, while 39 per cent expressed dissatisfaction with the way democracy works. A media trust index developed on the basis of the Eurobarometer survey also found that over half of the Maltese do not trust the media. Only 14 per cent of respondents in Malta have a high level of trust in the media, compared to 53 per cent who have a low level or no trust in the media, the index found. The number of people who do not trust the media is almost identical to the amount of people, 51...