Many were not labelled as political at all. On Google, dozens of ads carrying the Labour Party’s electoral slogan were filed under categories such as “Arts and entertainment” and “Family and Community. One payer who is suspected to work within the Office of the Prime Minister.

For others, including ads for the Nationalist Party running on websites across Malta, the payer cannot be identified at all.

Amphora Media is tracking political social media advertising on its Open Malta platform.

Since the election was called on 27th April, candidates have run at least 615 ads on Facebook and Instagram. 

A further 142 ads for the Labour Party have appeared on Google, run either by its media arm, One Productions, or by Clive Farrugia. One Clive Farrugia is the head of secretariat at the Office of the Prime Minister – he did not respond to a right of reply asking him to confirm or deny whether he placed ads on Google, but he is seen reposting Robert Abela’s and PL’s posts on his Facebook profile.

From October 2025, Google and Meta stopped running electoral ads in the EU following the bloc’s expansion of its advertising transparency requirements. 

Since the rule change, Amphora Media has identified at least 1,200 ads on election candidates’ Facebook pages.  Before then, the PL, PN and their candidates ran over 9,900 ads on Facebook and Instagram.

In most cases, the candidates advertising on their personal profiles declared themselves as the payers. In some cases, it was a business associated with the candidate.

Yet there are some notable exceptions: the Office of the Commissioner for Animal Welfare is the indicated payer of a paid promotion on Fleur Abela’s personal page, which features the Labour Party’s electoral slogan, Int Malta. In response to Amphora Media’s questions, Abela said that she paid for the ad herself.

META ads run by candidates since 27th April 2026:

Most ads run by candidates since 31st October 2025:

Google: Political Ads Labelled As ‘Entertainment’ And ‘Family’ By One 

Since the snap election was called, Amphora Media identified 74 political ads on Google placed by One Productions Ltd. Some of them have since been removed. 

Although the ads were clearly political and included the PL’s electoral slogan, they were labelled as “Arts and entertainment”, “Family and Community” or “Business and industrial”.

A second advertiser placing ads on Google for the PL was Clive Farrugia. Amphora Media found 68 ads by him, labelled “News, Books and Publications”, “Jobs and Education” and others.

One Productions did not reply to Amphora Media’s questions about these ads. It has not been filing audited accounts, as required by Maltese law, since 2010.

The Nationalist Party is also running Google ads on websites across Malta. However, it is not possible to identify the payer on the platforms the ad is running.

Google did not reply when asked whether it considered these ads compliant with its policies.

What the EU actually requires and why the platforms opted out?

The EU did not ban political advertising. 

According to the Commission’s guidelines, very large online platforms and search engines have obligations under the Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising regulation when they provide political advertising services (e.g., publishing, delivering, or disseminating political advertising) for remuneration. 

Ad technology providers like Google are considered political advertising publishers jointly with the public-facing interface (e.g. a news website).

Meta has called the provisions ‘unworkable’, and Google said ads defined as political are difficult to identify at scale. Both decided to stop allowing political ads. Google’s policy also affects YouTube, and Meta’s policy covers Facebook and Instagram.

Meta: short-lived ads on personal pages

Meta defines political ads as “Made by, on behalf of or about a candidate for public office, a political figure, a political party, a political action committee or advocates for the outcome of an election to public office; or About any election, referendum or ballot initiative, including ‘go out and vote’ or election campaigns”.

Meta says it reviews ads for violation of its policy based on “specific components of an ad, such as images, video, text and targeting information, as well as an ad’s associated landing page or other destinations”. The review is automated, and a manual review is added: “in some cases”.

Amphora Media is informed that Meta considers political ads running on Maltese candidates’ pages non-compliant with its policy and rejects them when it becomes aware of them.

Facebook’s ad library reveals the scope of this whack-a-mole approach: although there are fresh ads any given day, political ads are routinely rejected, and those that were not caught often run for under a day.

The European Commission’s spokesperson said that “It is for national authorities to enforce the Regulation [on ad transparency]. It is for the sponsor of political ads – the person seeking to publish a political ad – to declare the political nature of the ad. However, once platforms become aware of an undeclared political ad, they need to take immediate measures to ensure the ad’s political nature is properly declared. If necessary, they must withhold the dissemination until this takes place.”

The spokesperson added that “The Commission may revise these guidelines in the future, to take into account the lessons learned from the implementation. The Commission will also take stock of the implementation with stakeholders through an implementation dialogue in the course of this year.”

• Open Malta, a new political data transparency platform by Amphora Media, exposes political social media advertising.
  
• Labour Party, its MPs and MEPs ran 5,626 ads (estimated cost: €500,000)
  
• Nationalist Party, its MPs and MEPs ran 4,364 ads (estimated cost: €415,000)
  
• Social media advertising spikes in election seasons:
  • The 2022 General Election:
    • PL and MPs = 1,402 
    • PN and MPs = 834
    • PL alone = 180
    • PN alone = 158
    • Robert Abela = 148
    • Bernard Grech = 277
  • The 2024 MEP & Local Council Election Year:
    • PL, MEPs, MPs  = 504
    • PN, MEPs, MPs = 340
    • Most Ads: Thomas Bajada (168)
    • Second: David Casa (152)
    • Third: Robert Abela (88)
      

Between 2019 and 2025, the Labour Party, the Nationalist Party, and their elected MPs and MEPs ran at least 9,900 political ads on Facebook and Instagram, according to data compiled by Open Malta, a new political transparency platform.

The figures, drawn from Meta’s Ad Transparency database, come with a caveat: Meta doesn’t publish exact spending, only ranges. At the upper bound, the two parties and their candidates spent up to €1,413,130; the midpoint estimate is €911,167, and the floor is €407,588.

Across every scenario, Labour and its candidates outspent the Nationalists by an average of €85,000. As of 14 May 2026, the Labour Party’s Facebook page has approximately 68,000 followers, while the Nationalist Party’s page has around 46,000.

Those ads landed in a country where the platforms dominate. 

A Broadcasting Authority survey found Facebook is used by 89% of online Maltese, with Instagram a distant second at 49%. A 2023 Eurobarometer survey found 70% of Maltese respondents get their news through social media, climbing to 86% among 15- to 24-year-olds, the highest figure recorded across any age group.

Who runs the most on social media ads?

Across the full dataset, the Labour Party, its MPs and MEPs ran 5,626 ads (at a mid-range cost of €500,000), while its Nationalist Party counterparts ran 4,364 ads (at a mid-range cost of €415,000)

At the party level, the PL’s own page (Partit Laburista) ran 474 ads, more than double the 198 the PN’s page (Partit Nazzjonalista) ran.

Individual leadership pages of Robert Abela, Bernard Grech and others add a significant layer to those figures. 

Since becoming Prime Minister in 2020, Robert Abela’s personal page has run 456 ads, funded by the Labour Party, generating between 20 million and 23.9 million impressions over the years.

A similar pattern holds on the PN across the three leaders Abela has faced since taking office. 

Bernard Grech, who led the party from 3rd October 2020 to 10th September 2025, ran 555 ads on Meta platforms, generating between 16.4 million and 19.7 million impressions in total. From January 2024 onwards, those ads were paid for directly by Grech himself rather than the PN.

His successor, Alex Borg, has run 445 ads. In 2025 alone, the year of his election as party leader, his page ran 288 ads, more than double the 140 that his leadership rival, Adrian Delia, ran. 

Since winning the leadership, Borg has published just two adverts, with Meta’s records indicating both were paid for directly by Borg himself.

Who pays for ads is a different matter. Here, the Labour Party’s Facebook page is the top spender, with 908 ads paid for, followed by Raymon Abela with 686 and the PN with 667.

Elections Drive Political Social Media Ads

2022 General Election:

Election cycles drive significant surges in social media ads. During the 2022 general elections, the PL, PN and respective candidates ran 2,230 ads across the little-over-a-month campaign (20th February 2022 to 26th March),

However, the gap is significant. The PL and its elected candidates ran 1,402 ads, dwarfing the 834 ads run by the PN and its candidates.

At an individual level, party leaders dominated campaign advertising. Bernard Grech’s page carried the most ads at 277, just under double Abela’s 148.

Ray Abela, a PL MP, issued the most ads of any PL candidate, including PM Abela and the Labour Party itself (180), running 216 ads during the election season. 

2024 MEP & Local Council Elections:

2024 was a double election year with both the MEP and Local Council votes taking place.

This campaign was marked by candidates spending more on social media advertising than the parties themselves.

PL MEP Thomas Bajada (168) and PN MEP David Casa (152) ran the most ads during the season, followed by Prime Minister Robert Abela (88) and Owen Bonnici, the Minister for National Heritage, the Arts and Local Government (81).

How we collected the data:

The data was collected from Meta’s Ad Library, its official transparency database for political and issue-based advertising across Facebook and Instagram. Each political page, including those of politicians and political parties, was reviewed. 

Data extraction was carried out using a third-party data collection tool, after which the dataset was manually cleaned and verified. Each entry has a unique AD ID assigned by Meta.

In 2024, following the European Union’s transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising regulation, the company decided to phase out political, electoral, and social-issue ads in the EU in October 2025. The rule does not impact news organisations.

Google made a similar decision, removing the EU from its Google Ads Transparency Centre and from political ad-serving on YouTube.  The archive is inaccessible.

Meta’s ban on political advertising in the EU limits the availability of new political ad data in the region. Concerns remain that some political actors could attempt to evade the rules by misclassifying political advertising or avoiding political labels altogether 

In Malta, 99% of political donation sources go undisclosed. The government regularly awards public contracts without a competitive tender process. Ministers’ asset declarations are being pulled from public view. And the data that does exist sits scattered across disparate government portals, with no single point of accountability.

Open Malta exists to change that.

Built by Amphora Media, Open Malta is a free, public platform that brings Malta’s political finance data into one place, so journalists, researchers, and the taxpaying public can see clearly how money moves through the political system.

In its first version, Open Malta covers political donations, direct orders, campaign expenses, social media spending, and asset declarations. 

It will be continuously updated and expanded with new datasets over time. You can support our work over here.

What’s on the platform?

Open Malta builds on the Integrity Watch platform, originally hosted by the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation and developed in collaboration with Transparency International, and refreshes all of that data to the most recent available filings. It also adds two major new datasets.

Direct Orders:

Open Malta provides the first-ever public repository of direct orders, an uncompetitive public procurement mechanism regularly used by the government. 

The current platform carries all direct orders published from 2022 to today. The data from Amphora Media’s full 15-year investigation will be included over the coming weeks.

Search: search by year and by authority. 

Social Media Ads:

A new feature includes political social media advertising by Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. 

Over 9,900 ads run by Partit Laburista (PL), Partit Nazzjonalista (PN), and their respective candidates over the covered period have been collected.

The figures, drawn from Meta’s Ad Transparency database, come with a caveat: Meta doesn’t publish exact spending, only ranges. At the upper bound, the two parties and their candidates spent up to €1,413,130; the midpoint estimate is €911,167, and the floor is €407,588.

The data was collected from Meta’s archive. Political advertising stopped in October 2025 when Meta banned political advertising across the EU following new EU rules. Google made a similar decision, removing the EU from its Google Ads Transparency Centre and from political ad-serving on YouTube. The dataset will be updated if either platform reverses course.

Search: by party, candidate, year, and election.

Declarations:

MPs’ declared assets, bank and cash deposits, investments, and employment. Sorted by Alphabetical order. 

Political Donations: 

Includes all political party donations submitted to the Electoral Commission from 2016 to 2025. 99% of donation sources are undisclosed. 

You can search by party and by donation band. 

Campaign Expenses:

Per the Electoral Commission, candidate expenses are only published for a two-week window after each election, and the Commission has refused to provide data outside that window. This dataset will be updated following the 2026 general election.

Support our work, be part of our community

Malta’s transparency is shrinking. 

Robert Abela has moved to withhold ministers’ asset declarations from the public after the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life publicly expressed concern about missing declarations.

The vast majority of political donations remain anonymous. And public procurement records are scattered across government datasets, with no one responsible for stitching them together.

Open Malta is our attempt to stitch it together, to give the public a clear, consolidated view of how political money moves in Malta.

We can only do this with your support. Back the project here.