More Maltese can afford to heat their homes in winter today than could in 2012.
Documentary fact. EU-SILC's 'inability to keep home adequately warm' indicator (ilc_mdes01) fell from ~14% in 2012 to ~5% in 2024 — one of the largest energy-poverty improvements in the EU across the period. Combined with population growth (Malta ~417k → ~570k), the absolute number of Maltese able to heat their home is materially higher than in 2012. Drivers: frozen tariffs since 2014, real-wage gains, expanded welfare supports, stronger labour market.
Documentary fact. EU-SILC's 'inability to keep home adequately warm' indicator (ilc_mdes01) fell from ~14% in 2012 to ~5% in 2024 — one of the largest energy-poverty improvements in the EU across the period. Combined with population growth (Malta ~417k → ~570k), the absolute number of Maltese able to heat their home is materially higher than in 2012. Drivers: frozen tariffs since 2014, real-wage gains, expanded welfare supports, stronger labour market.
We tested Falzon's claim against (1) Eurostat EU-SILC 'inability to keep home adequately warm' indicator ilc_mdes01, (2) NSO Malta population estimates 2012-2024, (3) the Maltese Government Budget energy-subsidy disclosure series, and (4) Eurostat real-wage and at-risk-of-poverty data for the same window.
True. EU-SILC's energy-poverty indicator shows Malta moving from ~14% inability to keep home adequately warm in 2012 to ~5% in 2024 — a ~9 percentage point fall, among the largest improvements on this metric of any EU member state. Combined with population growth (Malta grew from ~417,000 to ~570,000 over the same window), the absolute number of people who can afford to heat their homes is materially higher than in 2012. The drivers are clear: frozen electricity tariffs since 2014 (the energy-subsidy programme), substantial real-wage gains, expanded social-policy supports, and a stronger labour market. Limitations: '70,000 more' is a stylised number — the precise figure depends on whether one applies the EU-SILC household-rate to the 2012 population, the 2024 population, or computes the change over a population-weighted average. Across reasonable assumptions, the order of magnitude (tens of thousands additional people) is robust.
Can more Maltese really afford to heat their homes today than in 2012
Energy poverty — the inability to adequately heat or cool one's home — is one of the EU's standard living-conditions indicators, measured each year through the EU-SILC survey. Malta's improvement on this measure across the past dozen years is among the largest in the EU.
The headline indicator
From ~14% in 2012 to ~5% in 2024 — a ~9 percentage-point fall. Among the largest improvements on this indicator of any EU member state over the same period.
What's actually happened in absolute terms
Malta's population has also grown materially over the same window — from ~417,000 in 2012 to ~570,000 in 2024. Combining the rate change with the population change:
- 2012: 86% of 417,000 = ~359,000 Maltese able to heat their homes adequately.
- 2024: 95% of 570,000 = ~541,000 Maltese able to heat their homes adequately.
The absolute number of people who can heat is substantially higher today than 2012, even before accounting for the structural rate improvement. Whichever counting method you use — like-for-like rate change on constant population, or the actual full population × actual rate — the answer is unambiguously 'many more, not fewer'.
What's driven the improvement
Three structural drivers across the legislature:
- Frozen energy bills since 2014. The energy subsidy programme has held electricity tariffs flat through high-inflation years, keeping heating affordable when most EU households saw bills jump 30–100% in 2022–2023.
- Higher household income. Minimum wage up 30% in nominal terms; employment rate up 17 percentage points; real wages rising. Even pensioners on the lower end of the income distribution have seen €80–€110/week of cumulative pension increases (covered in #213).
- Targeted supplementary support. Energy Benefit Scheme, top-up cost-of-living allowances, targeted heating grants for vulnerable households.
The combined effect: even at the lower end of the household-income distribution, the share of people who can't keep their homes warm has fallen by roughly two-thirds across the legislature.
Where Malta sits in the EU comparison
5% in 2024 places Malta well below the EU-27 average of ~9.3% on this measure, and dramatically below the worst-affected member states (Bulgaria, Greece, Portugal, where 15–20% of households report inability to heat adequately). Malta has moved from being a middle-of-the-pack EU country on energy poverty in 2012 to being among the EU's lowest-energy-poverty countries by 2024.
So is the claim accurate?
Yes, unambiguously. The share of Maltese unable to keep their homes adequately warm has fallen from ~14% to ~5% across 2012–2024. In absolute population terms, this means substantially more people today can heat their homes than could in 2012. The improvement is one of the largest in the EU on this indicator.
Verdict: True.