62% think Maltese government not doing enough for environment

The percentage of Maltese who think that their government is not doing enough for the environment has shot up by 16 percentage points since 2014.

Only 3% of Maltese think that their government is doing too much for the environment while 25% think it is doing enough. On the other hand 62% think it is not doing enough.

This emerges from a European Commission survey carried out in all 28 member states conducted in October. The survey included 500 Maltese respondents.

The proportion of respondents who think that their national government is not doing enough is by far the highest in Greece (88%), followed by Spain (78%), Slovenia (78%) and Italy (76%). The proportion is lowest in Luxembourg (42%) and Estonia (45%).

But the largest increase in the percentage of respondents who think that their government is not doing enough since 2014 was seen in Malta (+16 pp), while the largest decreases are found in Austria (-12 pp) and Croatia (74%, -12 pp).

The survey shows Portugal (40%) and Malta (38%) having the highest proportions that support better enforcement of existing legislation, with the lowest proportions seen in Latvia (17%) and Estonia (19%) as an effective measure to protect the environment.

Respondents in Malta (49%), Cyprus (46%) and Bulgaria (43%) are the most likely to see the introduction of stricter environmental legislation as an effective measure, while respondents in Estonia (21%) are the least likely to support this option.

The Netherlands (47%) and Sweden (40%) have the highest proportions that favour introducing or increasing financial incentives to businesses and people taking measures to protect the environment, while the lowest proportions are seen in Cyprus (20%), Malta, Romania and Slovakia (all 21%).

More than half of respondents say that they never take any notice of labels in Portugal (64%), Spain (59%), Malta (56%) and Bulgaria (55%), while only small proportions say this in Sweden (6%) and Denmark (13%).

While 62% of the Maltese think their government is not doing enough for the environment 28% think that air quality in their country has improved in the past decade.

Respondents in Ireland and the Czech Republic are the most positive about air quality in their country, with 33% and 31% respectively saying that it has improved in the past ten years.

The proportion that say air quality has improved is also relatively high in Malta (28%), the Netherlands (24%) and Germany (23%). By contrast, at least six in ten respondents in Cyprus (69%), Spain (68%), France (62%), Italy (61%), Greece (60%) think that the air quality has deteriorated in their country.