Non-EU nurses and carers will be spared the higher work permit fees introduced in Budget 2027, Health Minister Ian Borg has said, though they will still have to pay the new €400 annual charge levied on all third-country nationals.
Borg told Times of Malta that a 2025 legal notice cutting permit fees for healthcare workers will stay in force, shielding them from the increases announced in this year's budget speech. Under that legal notice, healthcare workers pay €150 when first applying for a Maltese work permit and €50 for each renewal. Live-in carers pay a lower rate of €27.50.
Those rates hold even after Budget 2027 raised permit fees for other third-country nationals. All other TCN workers will now pay €800 for a first work permit, up from €600.
The permit increase was one of several revenue-raising measures aimed at third-country nationals, who make up roughly a third of Malta's workforce. Under the budget, TCN workers without long-term residency lose eligibility for free childcare, must pay €33 a month to use buses or €83 a month to drive their own car, and face the €400 annual "infrastructure contribution". Healthcare workers defined under the Health Care Professional Act escape only the permit hike; every other charge still applies to them.
The minister confirmed the reduced fee on the fringes of a press conference on the ministry's health plans for 2027. Those include expanding Mater Dei Hospital's emergency department, completing two regional mental health centres, a new building for Mater Dei's medical imaging department and nine more outpatient clinics at Gozo General Hospital.
Speaking on Wednesday, Borg argued that healthcare salaries remain attractive enough to keep professionals in Malta. He said Maltese and TCN nurses were now paid equally after anomalies were removed, and that this was the result of government policy. He confirmed a deficit of Maltese healthcare professionals that is set to grow in the coming years, and acknowledged that free childcare and public transport had helped retain non-EU staff in previous years. A nurse working elsewhere in Europe, he said, would face higher bills, costlier public transport and higher petrol prices. He added that he wished every resident could benefit from services such as free childcare, but that the international economic situation no longer made that possible.
A report released last week by EY warned that Malta will need an additional 3,000 nurses and midwives by 2035 if the population keeps rising at current rates.
