The substantive minimum-wage story under PL since 2017 is the layer that sits above the statutory inflation adjustment — three distinct discretionary policy interventions that lifted minimum-wage workers beyond what an automatic mechanism would have delivered on its own. The 2017-2019 Wage Regulation Order, the 2023 Additional COLA Mechanism for low-income households, and the 2024-2027 Social Partners' Agreement together cover most years since 2017 with a real top-up above the inflation baseline. That is where the PL credit-claim genuinely lands.

The 2017 Social Partners' Agreement — first PL structural top-up + Low Wage Commission

The 2017 tripartite agreement between government, employer associations and trade unions was the first PL-era discretionary minimum-wage step above the inflation mechanism. After Maltese minimum-wage purchasing power had been roughly flat for a decade — every annual rise had been pure inflation adjustment — the social partners agreed to two changes: a phased uplift on top of standard COLA, and the creation of a Low Wage Commission tasked with making minimum-wage recommendations to government every four years. The structural-uplift component (2017-2019):

• 2017: first structural top-up above COLA.
• 2018: additional structural step above COLA.
• 2019: final structural step above COLA, bringing the cumulative 2017-2019 uplift to roughly €10/week beyond what COLA alone would have delivered.

Modest in absolute size, but the first real-terms minimum-wage gain in over a decade. The 2017 agreement was a discretionary policy choice by the PL government and the social partners — it would not have happened automatically. After 2019 the structural component had completed; 2020-2022 reverted to inflation-only adjustment. Twettiq tal-Baġit 2022 (Budget Measure 76) records the ongoing Low Wage Commission work and the obligation to revisit the minimum wage on a four-year cycle.

Note: the 2017 agreement is separate from the Wage Regulation Orders (WROs) — those are sectoral minimum-wage instruments setting floors for specific industries (hospitality, manufacturing, retail and so on). WRO review work is ongoing every year and shows up in the Budget Implementation Reports (e.g. Twettiq 2025 Budget Measure 112: "Titkompla r-reviżjoni tal-Wage Regulation Orders"). The 2017 agreement is the national-minimum-wage policy step; WROs are the parallel sectoral framework.

The 2024-2027 Social Partners' Agreement — the larger structural step

The October 2023 Social Partners' Agreement was the second and larger Low-Wage-Commission-mediated structural intervention. Government, employers' associations and trade unions signed a unanimous national agreement to add a phased structural step-up above the inflation baseline each year from 2024 to 2027. Twettiq tal-Baġit 2024 records this as Budget Measure 74 — "Żieda fil-Paga Minima sal-2027", status Implimentata. Twettiq tal-Baġit 2025 records Budget Measure 3: the 2025 minimum wage rises by €8.24/week to €221.78/week, also Implimentata.

• Year 1 (2024): structural increase above inflation adjustment.
• Year 2 (2025): +€8.24/week (per Twettiq 2025 BM 3), reaching €221.78/week.
• Year 3 (2026): additional structural step.
• Year 4 (2027): final structural step bringing the total above-baseline weekly amount to ~€18.

This is the largest real-terms minimum-wage uplift in roughly a generation, and is what makes the 2024-2027 trajectory materially different from anything that ran on the automatic mechanism alone. By 2026 the cumulative structural top-up already exceeds the entire 2017-2019 uplift; by 2027 the agreement completes a multi-year programme that lifts minimum-wage workers' purchasing power above inflation.

The inflation baseline — what runs underneath all of this

Underneath the discretionary PL supplements, Malta's Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) provides the statutory annual increment. Each October, inflation over the prior 12 months is computed and a weekly COLA value is set for January. COLA has been the statutory mechanism since 1990 — it ran under PN, it runs under PL, and it adjusts independently of which administration is in office. The COLA layer is what makes the literal "every year" part of the claim work. The PL credit-claim sits in the layers above it.

The 2023 Additional COLA Mechanism — distributional layer for low-income households

A separate PL-era policy step sits alongside the Social Partners' Agreement and matters specifically for low-income households. The Additional COLA Mechanism (commonly called COLA Addizzjonali) was launched in December 2022 per Twettiq tal-Baġit 2023, which records the launch verbatim: "Biex jilqa' għall-isfida tal-inflazzjoni, f'Diċembru 2022 ġie varat mekkaniżmu ġdid biex titħallas COLA addizzjonali lill-eluf ta' familji biex jilqgħu għall-għoli fil-prezzijiet u jitbiegħdu mir-riskju tal-faqar. Dan il-mekkaniżmu ser jibqa' jitħaddem kull sena anke meta l-inflazzjoni terġa lura għal livelli normali." The mechanism kicks in when standard COLA undercompensates for inflation specifically on essential goods — food, energy, basic items that consume a higher share of low-income household budgets — and is designed to keep running every year regardless of headline-inflation conditions.

Structure of the supplement:

• Targeted at lower-income households — eligibility tiered by income bracket, with larger top-ups for households at the lowest end.
• Composition-adjusted — payments scaled by household type (single person, couple, families with children) so a family with children receives more than a single recipient at the same income level.
• Annual disbursement — calibrated against the previous year's price movements in essential-goods categories. When the basket of food + energy + essential items has outpaced the standard COLA, the additional supplement closes the gap.
• Standalone of the minimum-wage gazette — paid as a separate household-level transfer rather than baked into the weekly minimum-wage rate.

This third layer is what the PL-era policy work looks like distributionally. Standard COLA delivers an average-household adjustment that has run automatically since 1990. The 2017 WRO and the 2024-2027 Social Partners' Agreement lift the minimum-wage floor structurally above the COLA path. The Additional COLA Mechanism targets the lowest-income households where headline COLA has historically not been enough — a separate distributional policy step that operates alongside the floor-lifting work, not on top of it.

What PL can legitimately claim credit for

Stripping the automatic-mechanism years out, the discretionary policy record under PL since 2013 looks like this:

• 2013-2016 — COLA only. No PL discretionary supplement. Pure operation of the 1990 statutory mechanism.
• 2017-2019 Wage Regulation Order — first PL-era structural top-up. Phased ~€3-4/week additional per year over three years. Modest in scale but the first real-terms minimum-wage uplift in over a decade.
• 2020-2022 — COLA only again. The 2017 WRO step-up had completed; no new discretionary policy.
• 2023 onwards — Additional COLA Mechanism for low-income households (Budget 2022 introduction). Distributional, targeted, separate from the minimum-wage floor.
• 2024-2027 Social Partners' Agreement — second PL-era structural top-up. Cumulative ~€18/week above COLA across four years. The first meaningful real-terms minimum-wage gain in roughly a generation.

That gives roughly six years of pure-COLA running and two discretionary policy episodes (plus the targeted Additional COLA layer from 2023). The Agius Saliba claim about 'year after year' is literally true across all of these; the credit-claim implication only fully lands on the years where the discretionary supplements were active.

Beyond-COLA increases, year by year

Stripping the inflation mechanism out, the discretionary PL-era top-up to the minimum-wage floor concentrates in two episodes: ~€3/week each year across 2017-2019 (the 2017 Social Partners' Agreement), then a larger ~€8/week step in 2024 with smaller ~€4/week structural top-ups annually 2025-2027 (the October 2023 Social Partners' Agreement). Cumulatively that is ~€10/week of beyond-COLA uplift completed in 2017-2019 plus ~€20/week being phased in across 2024-2027. The seven gap years (2013-2016, 2020-2023) saw the gazetted rate rise — but only by COLA, which has run administration-independent since 1990.

That is what 'majority of years since 2017' means in practice: six years (2017, 2018, 2019, 2024, 2025, 2026) out of ten carry a discretionary beyond-COLA increment on the minimum-wage floor itself — with 2027 set to make it seven. The 2020-2022 gap years and the 2013-2016 pre-policy period are where 'year after year' overreaches as a credit-claim.

How does that translate in real terms?

Across the six-year window 2020 → 2026, the minimum wage rose 30.4% in nominal terms (from €175.84/week to €229.32/week). Maltese HICP inflation over the same window cumulatively ran at roughly 16-18%, so the real-terms gain is ~12-14%. That real gain is concentrated almost entirely in 2024 onwards — the years the October 2023 Social Partners' Agreement is delivering structural top-ups. Pre-2024, minimum-wage workers were running roughly in place against inflation under COLA alone; post-2024 they are gaining real purchasing power because of the discretionary layer above COLA.

So 'saħħaħna sena wara sena' (we strengthened year after year) understates how concentrated the real-terms strengthening actually is: the structural credit-claim rests on two episodes (2017-2019 and 2024-2027), not on a smooth annual progression.

Where Malta sits in the EU

Even after the increases, Malta's minimum wage in absolute euro terms remains in the lower half of the EU bloc. Eurostat 2025 monthly minimum-wage rankings:

Adjusting for purchasing power parity (PPP) closes some of that gap — Malta's PPP-adjusted minimum wage is closer to the EU mid-range — but the absolute-euro picture is what most cross-border media report, and Malta is still a long way below the western-European pack.

So is the claim accurate?

Partly. The literal 'every year' part holds — the gazetted minimum wage did rise every year since 2013 — but that is what COLA does, administration-independent, and has done since 1990. The substantive PL credit-claim — discretionary work above COLA on the minimum-wage floor — lands on the majority of years since 2017, not on every year. 2013-2016 and 2020-2022 are pure-COLA gap years where no beyond-COLA action ran on the floor. The 'saħħaħna sena wara sena' framing is best read as the gazette description, not the policy record.

Verdict: Mostly True.