Malta's minimum wage among the lowest in Europe

Malta’s minimum wage of €994 per month is now among the lowest in Europe, according to new EU statistics published on Friday.

The figures, published by Eurostat, show how only seven countries across the bloc now register a lower minimum wage than that in Malta.

The data compares minimum wages across 22 EU member states. Several other countries, including Denmark, Austria, Italy, Finland and Sweden, do not have a national minimum wage.

Several countries that until recently had a lower minimum wage than Malta have now overtaken it in the rankings.

These include Greece, Poland and Croatia, all of which now provide a minimum wage of over €1,000 per month, despite having trailed Malta as recently as 2023.

The top five ranking countries, namely Luxembourg, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, all have a minimum wage more than double that in Malta.

The data makes for grimmer reading when adjusted for price differences in each country.

When factoring in purchasing power, only five EU countries (Slovakia, Bulgaria, Czechia, Latvia and Estonia) rank below Malta.

And the minimum wage in Malta is just 50% of the average median income, on a par with Belgium and lower than all but two EU countries, namely Estonia and Latvia.

According to Eurostat, Malta’s minimum wage has grown by an average rate of just 3.2% each year between January 2016 and January 2026.

The only EU country to have registered a lower rate was France, at 2.2%. Meanwhile, several eastern European countries, including Romania, Bulgaria and Poland, all registered sharper increases, with their minimum wages rising by more than 10% each year on average.

However, it is not all bad news.

Malta is also one of the countries with the lowest share of people earning minimum wage in the first place, the data suggests.

About 3.5% of employees in Malta are on the minimum wage, a figure identical to that of the Netherlands.

The only countries with a lower share of minimum wage workers are Estonia, Portugal and Czechia, Eurostat said.

Malta’s low minimum wage has been a subject of political debate for years.

In 2023, the government set up the Low Wage Commission, a body tasked with revising Malta’s minimum wage. By the end of that year, it had reached an agreement with social partners for a new minimum wage structure, with wages increasing each year over the following four years.

At the time the deal was signed, there were just over 2,000 people registered as minimum wage earners.

Nevertheless, advocacy groups have continued to press for further tweaks to the minimum wage, calling for further protection for vulnerable workers.

In 2021, Malta joined a group of several other EU countries in resisting a push for a harmonised framework for minimum wages across the EU bloc, arguing that this did not take into account the different realities in each country.