Malta has the highest healthy life expectancy in Europe.
Confirmed directly by Eurostat. In the latest Healthy Life Years (HLY) at birth data (2023, hlth_hlye), Malta is #1 in the EU for both sexes — women at 71.1 years and men at 71.7 years. EU averages are 63.3 (women) and 62.8 (men). Latvia is at the bottom of the EU table with 54.3 women / 51.2 men. Abela's framing is correct on the standard EU-comparable health-quality metric.
Confirmed directly by Eurostat. In the latest Healthy Life Years (HLY) at birth data (2023, hlth_hlye), Malta is #1 in the EU for both sexes — women at 71.1 years and men at 71.7 years. EU averages are 63.3 (women) and 62.8 (men). Latvia is at the bottom of the EU table with 54.3 women / 51.2 men. Abela's framing is correct on the standard EU-comparable health-quality metric.
We tested Abela's claim against Eurostat Healthy Life Years statistics (hlth_hlye), the Eurostat Statistics Explained HLY article, Eurostat life expectancy at birth (demo_mlexpec), the European Core Health Indicators framework, and EU-SILC methodology documentation. The methodological question is where Malta sits on the standard EU-comparable HLY measure, which combines mortality data with self-reported activity limitations.
Verdict lands at True because the latest Eurostat HLY data (2023) places Malta at the top of the EU for both sexes — women 71.1 years and men 71.7 years against EU averages of 63.3 and 62.8 — an 8-9 healthy-year outperformance over the EU mean. The deep-dive lays out the country ranking, the methodology, and the self-reported-component caveat that applies uniformly to the indicator without undermining Malta's top position; this editorial note is methodology only.
Does Malta really have the highest healthy life expectancy in Europe
Eurostat publishes Healthy Life Years (HLY) at birth as the standard EU-comparable measure of how many years a person can expect to live free from activity limitations. It is the indicator Abela's framing implicitly invokes — and on the latest published data, Malta tops the EU on both sexes.
The EU ranking on Healthy Life Years at birth, 2023
On the women's series, the picture is the same: Malta 71.1 years at the top; EU average 63.3; Latvia lowest at 54.3. The gap between Malta and the EU average is approximately 8-9 healthy years per person on each series — a substantial outperformance.
The caveat that doesn't change the ranking
HLY is built partly on self-reported activity limitations from the EU-SILC survey, alongside objective mortality data. Eurostat itself flags that cultural and reporting differences between member states can move the absolute numbers — Maltese respondents may report activity limitations slightly differently from Northern European respondents, for example.
That caveat applies uniformly to the indicator and does not undermine Malta's top-of-EU position, which holds across publication years and across both sexes. If Abela's framing were 'Malta has roughly twice as many healthy years as Latvia', it would be inflated; the strict 'highest in the EU' framing is exactly what the data shows.
So is the claim accurate?
Yes. On the standard EU-comparable measure of healthy life expectancy — Eurostat's Healthy Life Years at birth — Malta is #1 in the EU for both women and men in the latest published data. The gap to the EU average is roughly 8-9 healthy years per person.
Verdict: True.