• Malta issued over 326,000 single permits between 2015 and 2024.
• Nearly all single permit holders in Malta arrive for 12 months or more.
• The share of EU citizens among immigrants (for any reason) has shrunk during the post-pandemic recovery.
• In 2015, the share of employees and people applying for other reasons (including retirement) was about equal. By 2024, employment overshadowed the ‘other’ category.

Malta’s population has grown by over 100,000 in a decade. Behind the headline figures lies a deeper transformation; the country’s migration system is shifting away from residents and retirees attracted by favourable tax rates and weather towards large-scale import of non-EU labour.

An Amphora Media analysis of Eurostat data shows that, over the past ten years, Malta has rebuilt its migration model around non-EU workers recruited at scale to sustain rapid economic growth.

In 2015, employment-based migration stood on roughly equal footing with other forms of residence, a category that includes self-funded retirement. By 2024, employment had become the overwhelmingly dominant route into the country for third-country nationals, while self-funded retirement, coupled with other minor pathways, have lost their prominence.

EU countries like Malta can issue residence permits for various types of stay, including permits covered by EU law. A single permit combines a residence and a work permit, allowing its holder a brief period of unemployment as well, without losing their residence. It is the most common employment residence permit, but there are others.

Malta issued over 326,000 single permits between 2015 and 2024. Their number ballooned 11 times over the period, reaching 67,392, up from 5,970 issued in 2015.

Even during the pandemic, the number of such permits dipped very slightly, and peaked in 2023 at just over 70 thousand. The numbers include renewed permits.

Unlike countries like Lithuania or Portugal, Malta is not actively using this system for short-term, seasonal work. Nearly 9 in 10 single permit holders in Malta are there longer-term – for 12 months or more.

The number of longer-term permit holders has been soaring since 2018, consistent with the government’s policy changes that have made the recruitment of non-EU nationals easier since 2017.

Source: Eurostat

Immigration data shows how non-EU citizens overtook EU citizens. The share of EU citizens among immigrants (for any reason) further shrank during the post-pandemic recovery.

Source: Eurostat. Note: EU countries include the UK until 2020

From 2021, UK citizens need a work permit in Malta. After a post-pandemic growth, their number has been declining, with 203 new British workers in 2024.

By 2024, employment had become the main gateway into Malta for non-EU nationals, accounting for half of all new arrivals, with education representing a further quarter. 

The figures below break down residence permits by purpose.

Employment

Over 119,200 first residence permits for employment purposes were issued between 2015 and 2024. This is not the same as the number of workers, as some may have left or changed their residence status.

Indian nationals received the most permits, a fifth of the total issued, followed by Nepalese, Filipino, Serbian and Colombian citizens.

Several of these nationalities are also among Malta’s most deported.

In 2024, the number of first permits was as follows.

Source: Eurostat

Top nationalities in 2015-2024

Source: Eurostat

Highly qualified individuals can obtain an EU Blue Card and reside in Malta with it. 

Between 2015 and 2024, Malta issued only 27 new permits on this basis: Russians, Americans and Indians received three cards each.

Education

Between 2015 and 2024, a total of 40,180 residence permits were issued for educational purposes, with Indians (7,898 permits) and Colombians (7,239 permits) topping the list. 

In 2015-2016, only a handful of Indians came to study in Malta, but the number shot up to hundreds in 2017 and nearly tripled between 2022 and 2023.

Hundreds of Colombians had been coming to study in Malta already in 2015-2016, but new arrivals first exceeded 1,000 in 2022.

Top nationalities of residence permit recipients for education

Source: Eurostat

Family

Residence for family reasons is a separate status. The number of such first permits peaked in 2023 at over 3,000. Between 2015 and 2024, the main nationalities receiving these permits were as follows.

Main nationalities of permit recipients residing for family reasons

Source: Eurostat

Most new recipients of family permits joined another non-EU citizen already living in Malta. There were almost 2,600 in 2024, with 537 non-EU citizens joining an EU citizen living in Malta (the most common nationality among these is British).

Other reasons

Residence permits can also be issued for other reasons, which include financially independent retired persons, non-asylum discretionary permissions to stay, and diplomats. Eurostat also collects data on residents with international protection statuses (refugee status and subsidiary protection).

In Greece and Italy, over half of first-time resident permit holders in 2024 applied for one of these reasons, but in Malta, the share was under 16%. 

In 2015, the share of employees and people applying for other reasons (including retirement) was about equal, but employment has since overshadowed this other category.

Source: Eurostat. Note: the drop in employment-based residence permits likely reflects changes in the Temporary Work Agencies legislation.

In 2020, when Brexit changed the status of UK citizens, making them third-country nationals, it was estimated that around 8,000 retired Brits were living in Malta. 

The number of first permits for other reasons (including retirement) has recovered after a pandemic dip and soared in 2023 and 2024, reaching nearly 4,700.

In 2024, 4,073 residence permits were issued by Identita through the Malta Permanent Residence Programme (MPRP), the Malta Residency and Visa Programme (MRVP), and the Nomad scheme for digital nomads (the latter accounted for 1,031 of this number).

Eurostat data also contains statistics on ‘residence’ as a reason. China and Russia top the list of over 11,400 recipients between 2015 and 2024.

Top nationalities with ‘residence’ as a reason for permit

Source: Eurostat

Meanwhile, a total of 5,242 people received refugee status or subsidiary protection between 2015 and 2024, with the top nationalities being Syria and Libya. Contrary to leading politicians’ claims, the contribution of asylum seekers and refugees to Malta’s rapid population growth is minimal.

Asylum applications in Malta have been in steep decline, with the government praising this trend amid increased deportations. In 2025, Amphora Media reported on pushbacks to Libya to decrease arrivals.

In totality, this significant shift in migration policy, geared towards imported labour from non-EU countries, is reshaping towns and neighbourhoods as explored in Amphora Media’s Landscapes of Change investigation.

• EU institutions agree on a list of safe countries to which asylum seekers can be sent, either because they come from these countries, have transited through them, or because their governments agree to process asylum claims there.
• Five EU safe countries still have the death penalty.
• Malta is already deporting people to these countries in large numbers, but most deportees do not appear to have arrived irregularly.
• The government praises a high deportation-to-irregular-arrival ratio, but the nationalities of deportees do not fully reflect arrivals by sea.

Malta is already deporting large numbers of people to countries the EU now plans to designate as “safe”.

Recently, Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri praised a swift operation where migrants rescued at sea in December were deported in a matter of weeks. But most of those deported over time were not asylum seekers, raising questions about what the bloc’s new safe countries list will actually change on the ground.

On 18th December, the European Parliament and Council (the latter represents governments) agreed on the first-ever EU-wide list of safe countries of origin, allowing member states to fast-track or reject asylum applications from nationals of those countries.

While the move is intended to expedite asylum decisions and increase returns, Malta’s data suggest that deportation figures, often cited by the government as evidence of effective migration control, are driven more by the return of migrant workers and visa overstayers than by asylum policy.

What has the EU proposed?

At the EU level, the following countries will be designated as safe countries of origin, with limited exceptions: all EU candidate countries, Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Kosovo, Morocco, and Tunisia.

Five of these countries – Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Morocco and Tunisia – retain the death penalty in their laws.

“Where we can go faster, we should go faster,” EU migration commissioner Magnus Brunner said, arguing that faster procedures are needed to address asylum backlogs across the bloc.

While the list is new at the EU level, the idea is not. Currently, EU member states maintain their own lists of safe countries and regularly update them. Malta’s list does not include Colombia or Kosovo and does not automatically extend to EU candidate countries.

“When you have a high influx of refugees coming from a certain country, this country is often inserted into the [national] list,” said Gaia Romeo from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, who focuses on the implementation of EU safe country policies in her PhD.

“The EU has been trying to have a common list of safe countries of origin since 2004,” she explained.

What about vulnerable groups?

The new EU rules can make it easier to reject asylum applications under examination and expedite the processing of pending claims. The new rules would not affect Ukrainian applications due to the ongoing conflict there.

The final text stresses that individual assessments will still be required but that the onus will now be on the applicant to justify “why the concept safe country of origin is not applicable to him or her”.

It says that “special attention” should be paid to applicants in vulnerable situations, including LGBTIQ persons, victims of gender-based violence, human rights defenders, religious minorities and journalists.

But experts warn that these safeguards risk remaining largely theoretical in accelerated procedures.

“It really depends on how it is implemented,” Frowin Rausis, who researches asylum policy at the University of Geneva with an EU-funded project called “Finding Agreement in Return”, told Amphora Media.

“Cases that concern gender based violence and LGBTQI (…) need a lot of trust, time, and resources that might be absent in an accelerated procedure. If you can’t identify them, you’‘ll also not be able to protect them,” he said.

Romeo points to similar concerns in Italy.

“I’ve been told of many cases of people who had a very evident vulnerability or were in the need of protection, but the process was too fast, because they could not understand the procedure, couldn’t access a lawyer, or they didn’t trust the system,” she said.

“Someone coming from a very repressive system needs some time to understand whom they can trust.”

Malta: Asylum in numbers

Malta will be entering the new EU framework with asylum applications at their lowest level since 2010.

In 2024, the largest number of asylum seekers came from Syria (which accounts for nearly half of all applicants), Colombia and Bangladesh. Over 500 applications were left pending. These applicants were predominantly from Syria, Ukraine and Sudan. 

According to 2024 data compiled by aditus foundation, Malta considered 88 applications inadmissible.

Malta has been found in violation of asylum seekers’ rights on multiple occasions. Since 2004, it has lost five cases at the European Court of Human Rights, including rulings concerning the detention of Bangladeshi asylum seekers and the failure to properly assess the case of a Bangladeshi journalist.

This is how asylum seekers from the countries on EU’s safe list fared in Malta

Deportations: Are rejected asylum seekers leaving Malta?

The government said the number of migrants returned is around 81% of irregular arrivals, and that arrivals themselves have fallen by 93% over the last five years, thanks to effective return policies for those not qualifying for protection. Statistics on sea arrivals and deportations in 2025, as referenced by Minister Camilleri, have not yet been published.

Between 2020 and 2024, Malta deported 1,840 individuals. Nationals of countries now designated as safe at the EU level feature prominently among those returns, according to Eurostat data.

The data does not distinguish between forced returns of asylum seekers and other migrants. Five of the ten countries on this list grant EU citizens visa-free short-stay travel.

This suggests that about one-fifth of all deportations over the five years involved citizens who arrived in Malta visa-free and likely overstayed their visas. According to Jobsplus, as of December 2024, India, Nepal, Colombia, Serbia, Albania, Pakistan and Bangladesh featured among the top nationalities of employees in Malta.

Most deported nationalities in Malta in 2024 (highlight: visa-free travel)

The ranking of the most deported nationalities has remained stable over time. For each nationality, the number of migrants holding work permits far exceeds the number of deportations, showing that most deportations concern migrants other than rejected asylum seekers.

Most deported nationalities in Malta 2020-2024 (highlight: visa-free travel)

Note: no overstay data from 2020 was published. NSO publishes nationality data on boat arrivals only when that nationality is included among the most common nationalities, so the numbers are expected to be higher

When deportation figures are compared with boat arrivals, the discrepancy becomes clearer.

Some Bangladeshis and Egyptians used the sea route, but most of the other sea arrivals in 2024 were from Syria (46 people), Pakistan (31), Eritrea (9), Ethiopia, Ghana, Sudan (3 each), and Palestine (2).

During 2020-2024, Bangladeshis constituted the largest number of sea arrivals (21%), followed by Sudanese (18%), Eritrean (12%), Syrian (9%) and Somali people (210).

The data suggest that most deportations do not concern rejected asylum seekers, but migrants who entered Malta through other channels, including labour migration and visa-free travel.

Malta has deported one Syrian since 2020, alongside 33 Pakistanis, 40 Ghanaians, no Eritreans, Sudanese, Palestinians and Ethiopians.

Malta is already deporting people to Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Colombia, Morocco and several EU candidate countries, all of which feature on the EU’s new safe countries list. Nepal is the only country among Malta’s most frequently deported nationalities that does not.

Taken together, the figures indicate that Malta’s high deportation-to-arrival ratio is driven by two factors: a sharp decline in sea arrivals, and a large number of returns involving non-asylum migrants.

As a result, deportation figures are more accurately understood in relation to overall migration flows, rather than arrivals by sea alone.

EU proposal has limited impact and familiar problems

EU data shows that member states already maintain and revise their own lists of safe countries, which are frequently challenged in court.

In recent years, Greek courts rejected Türkiye as a safe third country, Italian tribunals ruled that Tunisia could not be considered safe, and Dutch authorities concluded that Colombia, now on the EU-wide list, does not offer sufficient protection for asylum seekers.

Rausis doubts the new framework will significantly increase returns or harmonise asylum policy.

“The harmonisation effect is limited, but more importantly, the question of return is critical for many countries.  This will make it more effective in the best case to get a return decision.”

“But the actual question of whether people are returned is not based on this kind of unilateral declaration. It’s really about the extent to which the cooperation with third countries is working.”

Romeo agrees. “Candidate countries tend to cooperate on returns, but then it’s very easy for [their citizens] to return to the EU.”

For Malta, the EU’s safe countries list may streamline procedures at the margins. But it does not explain, or justify, a deportation narrative that is driven largely by migrants who never entered the asylum system in the first place.

Further reading:

During a meeting with ECtHR officials, Foreign Minister Ian Borg claimed the rulings are “crucial” in shaping ongoing reforms. Justice Minister Jonathan Attard echoed this in a press release, praising Malta’s progress and compliance.

But is the country truly taking the Court’s guidance to heart? This edition of FATTI investigates whether Malta is walking the talk on human rights.

In the meeting with ECtHR officials, Foreign Minister Ian Borg said that the “judgements have been crucial in guiding our ongoing reforms as we remain committed to continuously updating our legislation to ensure their full implementation”.

“We see the implementation of ECtHR judgments not as a burden, but as a partnership—a shared responsibility to uphold the rule of law and promote dignity for all,” Minister Attard emphasised in his press release.

“Malta’s steadfast commitment to judicial independence and improving access to justice – areas in which Malta continues to benefit from constructive engagement with the Venice Commission [the Council of Europe’s advisory body] and GRECO [Council of Europe’s anti-corruption platform],” he added.

The Council of Europe is separate from the EU, but the ECHR (the European Convention of Human Rights) has significantly influenced EU law.

Individuals can initiate a case in ECtHR if they feel their rights under the ECHR have been violated by a signatory state – and only after they have exhausted avenues for  justice in domestic institutions, which in Malta’s case includes the Constitutional Court.

In a 2021 case regarding ongoing detention, the ECtHR ruled that constitutional redress proceedings are not an effective remedy for such complaints.

“What the Strasbourg Court has said repeatedly is that the whole system Malta has in place, intended to safeguard our rights, doesn’t work,” says Neil Falzon, director of aditus foundation, whose lawyers represent some claimants at the Strasbourg-based ECtHR.

“Speaking about people who are illegally deprived of their liberty, locally, there is no remedy that they can access – no remedy at all,” he added.

An analysis of judgments reveals that filed cases peaked in the period from 2010 to 2013, with visible patterns.

Cases involving rent laws – protected long-term rents that historically imposed low fees on owners – have been present since Malta’s EU accession, and the last one was filed as late as 2021.

Numerous cases were filed about the degrading treatment of detainees. Some of them involved, but were not exclusive to, asylum seeker detention. Every year, numerous cases involving the judicial process, rent laws, and other areas are being decided, suggesting a persistent need to address issues in these areas.

There was also a substantial number of cases related to the judicial process, including court bias and the length of proceedings. Many complaints that have been repeated over the years are similar, suggesting that substantial reforms have not been implemented.

Since joining the EU, Malta has lost 90 cases. Rent laws accounted for a quarter of them. Detention came second, with almost a fifth of lost cases. The justice process came third, followed by the expropriation of land.

Below is a deeper dive into the most prevalent issues that led to lost ECtHR cases.

Cases in property laws

Before 2009, many Maltese rental agreements were governed by rules from the post-war period, heavily favouring tenants. These rules allowed tenants to stay in properties for life at unchanged or heavily restricted rents, often far below market value.

Evictions were nearly impossible, and rent increases did not come close to market rates, leading to significant financial losses for property owners.

In 2009 and 2010, the first reforms were introduced to start addressing the imbalance. However, these were not enough to resolve widespread disputes. Other cases followed until further amendments in 2021 introduced mechanisms for landlords to request market-aligned rent and, in some cases, reclaim the property.

Expropriation of private land was another frequent theme in property-related cases before the ECtHR . Compensation was often delayed and did not reflect market values, leaving landowners with little recourse. In many cases, people were informed of the expropriation through the government gazette.

Following pressure from national and international courts, Malta reformed its expropriation laws in 2017, mandating transparent procedures, timely and fair market-based compensation, and the right to challenge claims, ensuring expropriation is a last resort and reinforcing respect for private property rights.

Cases in detention and asylum

Malta lost five cases relating to the treatment of asylum claims and many more because of their treatment in detention.

According to an aditus foundation report, when asylum seekers began arriving in greater numbers in 2002, Malta imposed immediate, indefinite, and mandatory detention—often lasting for years with no legal time limit.

Detention conditions improved when Malta joined the EU, but remained automatic. In 2015, Malta adopted a new reception policy, which introduced legal limits to detention,  after losing three cases in the ECtHR.

When the number of arrivals increased in 2018, automatic detention was instituted on public health grounds. In practice, this has been applied beyond legal limits and without clear communication.

In October 2021, former Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatović visited a detention centre in Malta and “was struck by the deplorable situation”. NGOs have criticised unreasonable obstacles to monitoring detention conditions.

One case, A.D v Malta, focused on this issue.

“At the time of A.D. and even before, everybody was detained under the public health legislation – adults, children, men, women, everybody was automatically detained for a couple of months. The ECtHR very clearly said that’s wrong,” lawyer Neil Falzon of the aditus foundation told Amphora Media. He represented A.D.

“The public health regime is now down to a couple of days, and people are given a detention order right away. At least now, the legal basis is one established in law.”

However, he notes that there was a negative development as well, because instead of detaining asylum applicants under public health rules on an ad hoc basis, Malta reverted to detaining all asylum applicants.

“We have to go again to the ECtHR and use the arguments we had used in [2010 and 2013]”, he said.

Separately, a reform of the accelerated asylum procedure remains unimplemented, despite Malta losing a related case in 2022.

Meanwhile, in 2013, an ECtHR application also stalled and blocked Joseph Muscat’s plans to push back to a group of asylum seekers to Libya.

Judicial reforms

Several cases end unfavourably for Malta because of deficiencies in its judicial system.

At the end of 2024, Malta was among the 15 countries considered not in sufficient compliance with GRECO’s 5th Round recommendations. Meanwhile, the  Venice Commission’s recommendation to create consistency in the application of constitutional rulings has yet to be implemented.

This has been flagged by the European Commission in its latest rule of law report:

“Uncertainty persists as to the erga omnes effect of judgements of the Constitutional Court, as it is up to Parliament to repeal or amend laws found unconstitutional”, which means that “judgments of the Constitutional Court lack universal applicability, allowing unconstitutional laws to remain valid until Parliament repeals them”.

The report noted “Parliament’s inconsistency in adhering to Constitutional Court rulings” and that “authorities confirmed that no steps have been taken to address this issue”.

As of mid-2024, Malta had 14 leading judgments of the European Court of Human Rights pending implementation—a decrease from 15 at the start of the year, but the same number as mid-2023.

More than half (57%) of the leading judgments from the past 10 years remained pending in 2024, up from 45% in 2023.  

The length of implementation has also increased. “The oldest leading judgment, pending implementation for 16 years, concerns disproportionate restrictions to property rights,” the report found, and there were “6 cases in total awaiting confirmation of payments”.

Lost human rights cases could be avoided at several stages, firstly by updating laws and establishing domestic redress mechanisms. But these essential reforms have been slow and materialised only after numerous cases.

Furthermore, opportunities to reach a friendly settlement with claimants and avoid losing a case are also not exhausted.

Expropriation and rental laws, which together have generated the largest number of lost cases, have been reformed – but only in 2017 and 2021, respectively.

Evidence of degrading detention conditions year after year shows that substantial reform has been lacking, despite detention conditions leading to a large number of lost cases for Malta.

The European Commission’s rule of law report notes that progress in judicial reforms is insufficient, which is likely to continue generating lost cases in the justice domain. 

Given the sluggishness of reforms in key areas generating lost cases at the ECtHR, the minister’s statement is misleading.

Reforms have taken place somewhat reluctantly, given the number of cases, while Malta’s parliament continues to hold power over whether rulings can be translated to actual legislation.

This project is supported by the European Media and Information Fund. The sole responsibility for any content supported by the European Media and Information Fund lies with the authors and it may not necessarily reflect the positions of the EMIF and the Fund Partners, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the European University Institute.