Malta had the EU's highest share of female transport workers in 2022, according to a recent Eurostat report.

Women made up almost 28% of the country’s transport sector, the Key Figures on European Transport 2023 Edition said.

The lowest share was recorded in Romania, where it was just over 10%. The European average, meanwhile, stood at around 17%.

Malta’s results reflect a significant improvement since 2016 when it ranked ninth and with a share below the EU average.

That year, Cyprus had the biggest share of female workers, but by six years later it had fallen to 16th place with a below-average share.

Young people were also well represented in Malta, with the country having the third highest share of those aged 15 to 29 working in the sector, just behind Luxembourg and the Netherlands, which placed first and second respectively.

Malta also reported the highest share of 15- to 49-year-olds working in transport, leaving it with the smallest proportion of workers aged 50 to 64 across the bloc in 2022.

By contrast, more than half of transport sector workers in Estonia were aged 50 or above, with the country also having one of the lowest shares of the youngest workers aged 15 to 29.

Fuel prices

Perhaps unsurprisingly, due to government subsidies on fuel, Malta registered the lowest increase in transport costs in 2022 when prices rose by just over 5%.

Meanwhile, fuels and lubricants were both unaffected by inflation that year, registering a zero increase in price.

“Every EU member state recorded a rise in consumer prices for transport in 2022, ranging from 5.2% in Malta to more than 20% in Luxembourg and the Baltic member states,” the report said.

“The relatively small increase in Malta reflected its stability in prices for transport fuels and lubricants (which are regulated) compared with increases elsewhere in the EU, which ranged from 13.3% in Hungary to 41.8% in Austria.”

This trend continued throughout last year, with transport costs in Malta rising even less than the year before at an inflation rate of less than 2%, according to Eurostat data. However, despite the country seeing no increase in the price of fuel last and lubricants last year, it did not see a reduction in prices either, unlike most others in the EU.

Lithuania saw the biggest fall in prices in 2023, when it recorded a reduction of over 12%, while only France and Iceland witnessed fuel price increases, albeit only slightly.

Malta currently enjoys the lowest price at the pump for unleaded petrol, according to the most up-to-date European Commission weekly oil bulletin which regularly compares fuel prices across the bloc.

Electric cars

Despite Malta’s reliance on cheap fuel, electric cars also saw healthy growth proportionally in 2022, with the country one of only seven where more than 15% of newly registered cars were electric. That year, more than one-sixth of all new cars registered in Malta was electric, with 990 cars using the technology out of the around 6,500 total.

In March last year, then Parliamentary Secretary for EU Funds Chris Bonett said 2022 had seen more than 1,300 applications for grants to help pay for electric vehicles.