Malta

Whether a traveller needs a visa for Malta is settled by Regulation (EU) 2018/1806 and not by Maltese law: Annex I nationals need one, Annex II nationals do not for stays of no more than 90 days in any 180-day period. What Maltese law adds is a measure of its own that has never been brought into line. Regulation 11(1) of the Immigration Regulations permits a third-country national to enter "for a visit the duration of which shall not exceed three months", with a visa "as required by the Common Consular Instructions" - the Union instrument the Visa Code replaced in April 2010, named in a regulation still in force. Regulation 11(4) gives the visa-exempt traveller three months as well, and adds something the Union measure does not have: the Principal Immigration Officer may extend a visit beyond three months. The Immigration Act counts in months too. Under article 6(2) leave to land and remain is deemed to have been granted for three calendar months unless the officer specifies otherwise, and leave to land alone for twenty-four hours. Three calendar months is not 90 days in any 180-day period: one is a single block measured forward from arrival, the other is a rolling allowance measured backwards. Separately, the Act puts a register duty on whoever sells you a bed: article 31 applies to any premises where lodging or sleeping accommodation is provided for reward, and the keeper must record every guest who is not an exempt person.

Ordinary naturalisation under article 10(1) of the Maltese Citizenship Act asks for residence in Malta throughout the twelve months immediately before the application, and four years in the aggregate during the six years before that twelve-month period - five out of seven, with the Minister able to reach back further in special circumstances. The language test is the unusual part: "adequate knowledge of the Maltese or the English language", and English is an official language of Malta, so for most applicants there is no language to learn. Good character and being "a suitable citizen of Malta" complete the list, and article 7 says plainly that it is lawful to be a citizen of Malta and of another country at the same time. Marriage is a separate route under article 6: registration as of right after five years married to and living with a Maltese citizen, with no residence or language requirement of its own. Descent is a third, and it reaches further than most. The route that made Malta famous is the one that is no longer there. Act XXI of 2025 deleted the definition of "individual investor programme" from article 2 of the Act and deleted article 24(1)(i), the regulation-making power it rested on - the consolidated Act now prints "(i) Deleted by Act XXI.2025.7." where it stood. What article 10(9) now provides is naturalisation by merit: exceptional services, an exceptional contribution including through job creation, or exceptional interest to the Republic. The regulations under it were renamed accordingly, their fee regulation was deleted, and a transitory provision cut off every application not already approved before 29 April 2025.

A citizen of the Union may reside and move freely in Malta for three months on the same conditions as a Maltese national, without any conditions or any formalities, and the three months stretch to six for someone looking for work. Beyond three months the Order attaches conditions by category: employment, self-employment, study, or - for everyone else - sufficient resources and comprehensive sickness insurance cover. Five years of continuous legal residence gives a right of permanent residence, and that right, once acquired, stops being conditional on anything. Two things in the Maltese version are worth knowing before arrival. Registration is not optional here: article 7(2) says that upon the expiry of three months a Union citizen shall apply for a registration certificate, and a non-Union family member shall apply for a residence card. And article 3(6) puts a reporting duty on a Union citizen who is not staying in paid accommodation - within one month of arrival, report your presence to the Principal Immigration Officer at a designated office and take the written acknowledgement. The duty exists because the Immigration Act's register of guests, which otherwise does the recording, only reaches premises where lodging is provided for reward: stay with family or in a flat you own and nobody is keeping that register, so you keep it yourself.

Malta's prohibition on working is not a separate offence you can look up: it is written into whatever permission you already hold. Article 11 of the Immigration Act makes it an implied condition of any leave to land and remain, and of any residence permit, that the holder shall not exercise any profession or occupation, hold any appointment, be employed by any other person or engage in business without a licence from the Minister - and the Minister may grant that licence for such period and under such conditions as he thinks fit, and cancel or vary it at any time. The procedure for getting one is the single permit: S.L. 217.17 transposes the Union's single-permit directive so that residence and work are applied for once and granted on one document. Two features of that procedure are worth knowing. The Director must decide within four months of the application being lodged, extendable where the examination is complex; and if he does not, regulation 14 does not treat the silence as a refusal or leave it unanswered - the application "shall automatically be passed on for appeal to the Board". Against that sits regulation 13, which lets the Director declare an application inadmissible on the grounds of volumes of admission and not process it at all. For the highly qualified there is the EU Blue Card under S.L. 217.27: a contract or binding job offer of at least six months, a salary of at least one and a half times the average gross annual salary in Malta, and a card valid for at least twenty-four months. The Minister responsible for employment may cut that multiplier to 1.2 for occupations in the top two ISCO groups where a particular need is determined, and must tell the European Commission each year which professions those are.

Admission for study is governed by S.L. 217.22, which transposes the Union's research-and-studies directive and covers researchers, students, trainees and volunteers in one instrument. The general conditions in regulation 7 apply to all of them: a travel document covering the planned stay, parental authorisation for a minor, sickness insurance for all risks normally covered for Maltese nationals, any applicable fee, and sufficient resources to cover subsistence without recourse to the social assistance system, plus the return journey. Regulation 8 adds what a student must show specifically: acceptance by a higher education institution, that the institution's fees have been paid, sufficient knowledge of the language of the course, and resources to cover the study costs. The authorisation runs for at least one year, or for the duration of the studies if those are shorter, and at least two years for a student on a Union or multilateral programme. The part worth planning around is work. Regulation 21 entitles a student to be employed outside study time - but only if he holds an employment licence issued under article 11(3) of the Immigration Act, which is the same licence any other foreign worker needs. The number of hours is set by the employment authorities after examining the labour market, and the regulations put a floor under it rather than a ceiling: not less than 15 hours a week. Failing to respect those limits, or not making sufficient progress in the studies, is a ground on which the authorisation can be withdrawn. After finishing, a student or researcher may stay at least nine months to look for work or set up a business, on a residence permit issued for that purpose.

The route is the Malta Permanent Residence Programme, made under article 7A of the Immigration Act and set out in S.L. 217.26. The published headline is a contribution of €37,000, and it is the smallest of the numbers. Before it comes a non-refundable administration fee of €60,000 for the main applicant - €15,000 within a month of submitting the application and €45,000 within two months of the Letter of Approval in Principle - plus €7,500 for each dependant who is not a spouse, a minor child or certain others. On top sit a €2,000 donation to a registered voluntary organisation, a qualifying property bought for at least €375,000 or rented at not less than €14,000 a year, and proof of assets worth €500,000 of which €150,000 is financial, or €650,000 of which €75,000 is financial. The property and the capital must both be held for five years. What the certificate buys is residence and nothing else: regulation 10(1) entitles the holder and the dependants on the certificate to reside, settle or stay indefinitely in Malta, and then says the certificate "shall not, by itself, entitle the holder thereof to any other rights mentioned in the Immigration Regulations" - so working still needs the ordinary employment licence. The programme that preceded it is closed. Regulation 26 provides that as from 29 March 2021 all new applications are governed by these regulations and no new application may be made under the Malta Residence and Visa Programme Regulations, S.L. 217.18, which remain in force only for the certificates and applications already under them.

Malta has no retirement residence permit. What it has is the Malta Retirement Programme, made under the Income Tax Act as S.L. 123.134, which confers a special tax status, and an Economically Self-Sufficient residence permit which Identità issues to the people who hold one. The order matters: the agency states that it accepts self-sufficiency applications only from beneficiaries of a local residence investment or tax programme, so a retiree with savings and no programme behind them has no door to knock on. The programme's own conditions are specific. The beneficiary must not be in an employment relationship, though a non-executive seat on a Maltese board is allowed, and must not be a Maltese national. A pension, all of it received in Malta, must make up at least 75% of chargeable income. There must be a qualifying property: bought for at least €275,000 in Malta or €220,000 in Gozo or the south of Malta, or rented at €9,600 a year in Malta or €8,750 in Gozo or the south. The applicant must not be domiciled in Malta and must not intend to become domiciled there within five years - the programme is explicitly for people who do not mean to make Malta their permanent legal home. Tax is 15% on foreign income received in Malta, with a floor of €7,500 a year plus €500 for each dependant and each special carer, and anything else at 35%. And the status carries a presence rule in both directions: lose it by living in Malta less than ninety days a year averaged over five years, or by spending more than 183 days in any single other jurisdiction in a calendar year.

Malta's route for someone living on income rather than a job is a pair of near-identical tax programmes: the Residence Programme Rules, S.L. 123.160, for an EU, EEA or Swiss national who is not Maltese, and the Global Residence Programme Rules, S.L. 123.148, for a third-country national who is not a long-term resident. Read side by side they are the same instrument with the nationality clause flipped. Both charge a non-refundable €6,000 on application, reduced to €5,500 where the qualifying property is owned and situated in the south of Malta. Both require a qualifying property - bought for at least €275,000 in Malta or €220,000 in Gozo or the south, or rented at €9,600 or €8,750 a year on the same split - occupied as the applicant's primary residence, with nobody else living there except dependants and declared household staff. Both tax foreign income received in Malta at 15%, with a floor of €15,000 a year payable whatever the income is, and everything else at 35%. Neither states an income figure: the test is "stable and regular resources which are sufficient to maintain himself and his dependants without recourse to the social assistance system in Malta", assessed by the Commissioner. And both carry a condition that gets left out of almost every summary: the applicant must be able to communicate adequately in one of the official languages of Malta. Since English is one of them under article 5(2) of the Constitution, that is a low bar for most applicants - but it is a condition, and it is not in the Malta Retirement Programme.

Malta answers this question in two completely different places depending on who you married. Marry a citizen of Malta and you become an exempt person under article 4(1)(g) of the Immigration Act, so long as you are still married to and living with that person: Part IV of the Act, the part that controls entry, residence and removal, simply does not apply to you. The fee schedule confirms what that means in practice - a residence permit for an exempt person under national legislation is free of charge, while a permit for an unmarried partner of a Maltese citizen costs €50. Marry a third-country national living in Malta and you are in the Family Reunification Regulations, S.L. 217.06, where the sponsor is defined as a third-country national residing lawfully in Malta. There the conditions are substantial. The sponsor must hold a residence permit valid for at least one year and have reasonable prospects of permanent residence; the spouse must be twenty-one or over; and the sponsor must show accommodation normal for a comparable family, sickness insurance for all risks, and resources "equivalent to, at least, the average wage in Malta with an addition of another twenty percent income or resources for each member of the family". A reunited spouse does not get the sponsor's access to the labour market straight away: for the first twelve months after arrival, employment is subject to a labour market assessment and an employment licence. After five years the spouse becomes entitled to an autonomous residence permit of their own, valid for a year and renewable - and the Director may confine that permit to the spouse alone if the marriage has broken down.

Malta has no residence category for people with Maltese ancestry, and it does not need one: article 5(3) of the Maltese Citizenship Act gives a descendant an entitlement to citizenship itself, with no residence, no language test and no investment. The test is narrow and precise. You must prove that you are "a descendant in the direct line of an ascendant born in Malta of a parent likewise born in Malta" - two consecutive generations born in Malta at the head of the line, not one. Article 3(3) does the same for anyone born before the appointed day, and article 5(3) for anyone born on or after it. A minor can be registered on an application by whoever has authority over them. The catch is the chain rule, and the date in it has moved. Article 5(5) and (6) say that where a parent of the applicant was alive on 1 August 2028, or was born on or after that date, and is also such a descendant, the applicant is not entitled to be registered unless that parent had themselves at some time acquired Maltese citizenship under article 5 or article 3. Act XXI of 2025 pushed that date out: it substituted "1st August 2028" for "1st August 2007" and for "1st August 2010" throughout both articles. From 1 August 2028 each generation has to register for the next one to be able to. Article 5(8) keeps a final discretion: nobody is registered under the article unless the Minister is satisfied that the grant is not contrary to the public interest. The state fees are €150 on application and €50 on registration.

Malta's Income Tax Act does not decide tax residence by counting days. The definition in article 2(1) reads in full: "resident in Malta" when applied to an individual means an individual who resides in Malta except for such temporary absences as to the Commissioner may seem reasonable and not inconsistent with the claim of such individual to be resident in Malta. There is no 183-day rule in it, and no number anywhere in the definition. What the Act does instead is split the charge by domicile. Article 4(1) charges tax on income accruing in or derived from Malta or elsewhere, and whether received in Malta or not - the ordinary worldwide charge - and then proviso (i) carves out the case most newcomers are in: where income arises outside Malta to a person who is not ordinarily resident in Malta or not domiciled in Malta, tax is payable only on the amount received in Malta. Proviso (ii) goes further on capital: no tax at all on capital gains arising outside Malta to such a person, remitted or not. That is the remittance basis, and it is keyed to domicile rather than to how long you have been here. It is not free. Article 56(27) puts a floor under it: an individual who is ordinarily resident but not domiciled in Malta, and who derives at least €35,000 of income arising outside Malta which is not or not fully received in Malta, has a minimum tax liability of €5,000 a year, with Maltese tax already paid counted towards it. Above that, the ordinary scales in article 56(1) reach 35% on chargeable income over €60,000, which is also the flat rate charged on every company under article 56(6).

The Health Act, Chapter 528, settles the question in one sentence and then hands the answer to somebody else. Article 24(1) says that only an insured person may qualify for free healthcare benefits provided by or on behalf of the public healthcare system, and article 24(2) says the Minister determines by regulations who is deemed an insured person - a definition article 2 completes by saying an insured person is "a person included in the list established by regulations made under this Act". So the Act creates the category and the category is filled in elsewhere. What the Act does say plainly is what happens if you are not on that list: under article 25(4) you pay the full fees from the Register of costs the Ministry keeps and publishes, with a ministerial waiver available only in exceptional circumstances or on humanitarian grounds. Alongside this, the Social Security Act makes insurance a consequence of working: under article 3(1) every person who has passed their sixteenth birthday and not reached retirement becomes insured as an employed, self-employed or self-occupied person, and under article 7(1) three contributions a week are payable for an employed person - one by the worker, one by the employer and one out of the Consolidated Fund. The Social Security Act's own medical benefit is narrower than its name suggests: "Free Medical Aid" under article 23 is a means-tested supply of drugs, spectacles, dentures and prosthetic aids for conditions that do not require treatment in a hospital, with the household's weekly means tested against the Eighth Schedule. One more provision is worth knowing before using a private clinic: article 26 requires every private healthcare provider to charge the same scale of fees whatever Member State the patient comes from.

Malta transposed the Union's payment accounts directive as S.L. 371.18, and the result is a right rather than a service. Regulation 19(1) makes consumers legally resident in Malta or in another Member State eligible to open and use a payment account with basic features, and regulation 19(2) adds that the right applies irrespective of where the consumer lives - so being resident in another Member State is enough to open an account in Malta. Regulation 19(3) spells out who counts as legally resident, and the list is deliberately wide: consumers with no fixed address, refugees and beneficiaries of subsidiary or other protection, stateless persons, asylum seekers and even failed or rejected asylum seekers, and people with no residence permit whose expulsion is impossible for legal or factual reasons. The protection that matters most is in regulation 19(4A): a credit institution shall not refuse to open such an account on the basis of the consumer's financial circumstances, including employment status, level of income, credit history or personal bankruptcy. Regulation 19(7) adds that banks may not build procedures designed to dissuade people from exercising the right. Every credit institution with five or more branches in Malta must offer the account, through its whole branch network, and must decide within ten business days of a completed application. The services must be free of charge or for a reasonable fee, with reasonableness judged against national income levels and what other Maltese banks charge. Two limits are written in. Regulation 19(3A) lets a bank require a consumer to show a genuine interest in opening the account; and regulation 1(7) subjects the whole right to anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist-financing obligations, which is the provision a bank will reach for when documents are missing.

Malta recognises every driving licence issued by another Member State without formality: regulation 6 of S.L. 65.18 says so in one sentence. A licence from anywhere else is a different matter. Under regulation 5 the holder of a third-country licence may drive in Malta for a period not exceeding twelve months from the date of their last entry, for the classes the licence covers - with heavy and passenger categories excluded unless they also hold a certificate of professional competence. After twelve months the licence stops being enough, and whether it can be exchanged rather than re-earned depends on a list. Regulation 7(1) allows exchange for a licence from another Member State, from Switzerland, or from a country with which Malta has a mutual recognition agreement, and regulation 7(2) says those countries are the ones in the Fourteenth Schedule. The Schedule names three: Australia, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom including the Isle of Man, Guernsey, Jersey and Northern Ireland. Everyone else sits a Maltese test. The threshold for all of this is "normal residence", defined as the place where a person habitually lives for at least 185 days in each calendar year because of personal and occupational ties - and the definition ends by saying that attendance at a university or school does not imply a transfer of normal residence, so a student does not become obliged to convert. A person normally resident in Malta may hold no more than one Member State licence, and the Authority will not issue a Maltese one until the other is surrendered. A full car licence runs ten years, five once the holder reaches seventy, and the Ninth Schedule charges €70 for the ten-year licence.

Malta does not write its own rule here. Relief for the belongings of someone moving in from outside the Union is Council Regulation (EC) No 1186/2009, which applies directly in every Member State. Article 3 admits personal property imported by a natural person transferring their normal place of residence from a third country free of import duties, and article 2(1)(c) defines personal property widely enough to include not just household effects but cycles and motor cycles, private motor vehicles and their trailers, camping caravans, pleasure craft and private aeroplanes, along with household provisions, pets and saddle animals. Three periods govern it. The goods must have been in your possession, and if non-consumable actually used, at your former home for at least six months before you stopped living there; you must have had your normal residence outside the customs territory for a continuous twelve months; and the goods must be entered for free circulation within twelve months of the date you established residence here, though they may arrive in several consignments. After they arrive a fourth period starts: for twelve months from the date entry was accepted, the property may not be lent, given as security, hired out or transferred without first telling the authorities, and doing any of those things before the twelve months are up triggers the import duty at the rate on that day. Four categories never qualify, whatever the circumstances of the move: alcoholic products, tobacco and tobacco products, commercial means of transport, and articles for use in a trade or profession other than portable instruments of the applied or liberal arts. There are two ways round the timing. Article 9 lets goods come in before you arrive if you undertake to establish residence within six months and give security; article 10 covers the person who leaves the third country for occupational reasons without yet settling here.