Malta has the third-largest number of ministers in EU countries, an exercise by Times of Malta has revealed.

With 21 ministries, including the prime minister, Malta stands joint third with the much larger countries Greece, Poland and Croatia.

The ones with the largest cabinets in Europe are Spain and Sweden, both 23 ministers, followed by Italy – 22. Germany, the largest EU member state, has just 16 ministers, including Chancellor Angela Merkel.

When seen as a percentage of the total number of members of the House of Representatives, Malta is top – 31 per cent of its MPs are ministers.

The calculation excludes all upper houses of parliament like the Italian senate and also excludes junior ministers.

The figure increases to just over 40 per cent when parliamentary secretaries are included.

With Saturday’s cabinet reshuffle, Robert Abela added three ministers to his already large cabinet, making it 20 ministers and six parliamentary secretaries.

Parliamentary secretaries technically do not form part of the cabinet but attend meetings.

Most European countries have state secretaries, similar in role to Malta’s parliamentary secretaries. Portugal has 18 ministers and a team of 43 state secretaries while The Netherlands and Belgium have eight and five state secretaries, respectively.

Political commentators have observed that the reshuffled cabinet is the largest in Malta’s political history.

Abela’s predecessor, Joseph Muscat, made do with 14 ministers and eight parliamentary secretaries while in 2008, then prime minister Lawrence Gonzi only had eight ministers and six parliamentary secretaries.

In 2003, Eddie Fenech Adami had a group of 13 ministers and five parliamentary secretaries.

The prime minister’s salary stands at around €63,500 while that of ministers is €56,300.

Graphic: Christian Busuttil/Design Studio

The total cost of Abela’s cabinet now stands at about €1.2 million a year.

Parliamentary secretaries are paid nearly €54,000 a year which means they cost taxpayers an additional €336,000 annually.  

Ministers are allowed to engage a 19-strong private secretariat while parliamentary secretaries can have an 11-member team.

The prime minister can employ up to 38 people in his private secretariat.

Abela has reshuffled his cabinet just 11 months into his premiership to bring in Miriam Dalli from her job as MEP in Brussels, making her energy minister, and to replace Edward Scicluna, who will become Central Bank governor, with the prime minister’s former head of secretariat Clyde Caruana.

Abela also promoted junior minister Clayton Bartolo to tourism minister, while Justyne Caruana was brought back to cabinet to run the education portfolio, taking over from Owen Bonnici who was given the job of drawing up a post-COVID-19 strategy.

The four new ministers were sworn into office on Monday.

Bonnici was one of the three biggest losers in the reshuffle, along with Julia Farrugia Portelli and Silvio Parnis. All three are seen to have mismanaged the COVID-19 situation in the sector they managed.

Infrastructure Minister Ian Borg is now missing two key elements of his previous portfolio, having lost parliamentary secretary Chris Agius, responsible for construction, to the environment ministry, and the Lands Authority to the economy ministry.

On Sunday, the prime minister hailed his new cabinet as one “of substance”, with the youngest group of ministers and with the most females and Gozitans ever appointed to lead an administration.