The step-by-step plan for Malta

In this step you see which registration you need on Malta, and what hangs on it afterwards.

As an EU citizen you don't need a permit. If you stay longer than three months, you do have to register. You do that with Identità, the Maltese agency for identity and residence. You then get the e-Residence document: your Maltese residence card.

This is how the application works:

• You apply online, via Identità's Expatriates Portal.
• Identità only processes your application once your file is complete.
• If it's complete, you get a biometrics appointment within 48 working hours, where your photo and fingerprints are taken.
• If you lodge half a file, you go to the back of the queue.

Everything hangs on that one card afterwards. You need it for your eID, the digital key to the Maltese government. The bank uses it to identify you. And you use it to enrol in healthcare.

So the chain is: home, file, biometrics, card. The step-by-step plan holds that order for you.

In this step you choose where on Malta you'll live. That choice decides your rent, how much noise you hear and what your daily life looks like. So make it before you start looking for a home.

Malta is small, but the differences are big:

• Sliema and St Julian's are the expat heart. You'll find English, offices and restaurants, but also the highest rents, construction noise and traffic.
• The south and the interior are Maltese, cheaper and quieter. They do ask more of your adaptability.
• Gozo is the small sister island: green, slow and quiet. But there's a ferry between you and everything the main island has.

Know too what you're getting into in terms of density. Malta is the most densely populated country in the EU, and you feel that in the traffic and in summer.

In this step you see what the move is going to cost you. The paperwork is free here: the e-Residence registration costs nothing. The money is mainly here:

• The home. Sliema now asks Dutch rents.
• The crossing, if the car or the household contents come along. You drive to Sicily or Salerno and then take the boat.
• The energy bill of a house without insulation.

Work it out with your own choices.

In this step you take the decision together, with the difficult sides included. You end up with a few conditions on paper that you both stand behind.

Going alone? Then have this conversation with the people you leave behind. The questions below work for them too.

Take three evenings. One conversation is too short for a decision like this. Agree on three evenings, with a week in between:

• Evening 1, why. What do we hope to find in Malta? What are we leaving behind here? Would that really be different there?
• Evening 2, what we give up. Who and what will we miss? What are we dreading most? What do we do if it disappoints?
• Evening 3, the conditions. What has to be arranged for each of us to say yes? When do we check together whether it's going well, for example after six and after twelve months? And what would be a reason for us to go back?

Write the conditions down. On the kitchen-table card it all fits on one A4 sheet.

Malta feels like the easiest emigration in the Mediterranean: English, EU, three hours' flight. Precisely for that reason four things need to be on the table:

• The winter indoors. Maltese houses have no heating and no insulation. January is clammy there, and a dehumidifier is standard equipment.
• The wage level. Outside iGaming (online gambling), financial services and tech it lies far below the Dutch one.
• The scale. On 316 square kilometres every outing is the same island. Some find that peace, others feel claustrophobic after a year.
• The bustle. Traffic and building sites are part of present-day Malta.

Divide the work. Agree who takes on which part of this plan: the papers, the house and the cancellations, the school, the move. That way not one of you carries everything. Invite your partner into your plan; then you can both see what's done.

Is one of you going without an income of your own? Whoever lives in Malta and doesn't work in the Netherlands usually no longer builds up AOW. For every year you're not insured, you later get 2 percent less AOW. From the moment you're no longer insured, you have one year to take out voluntary insurance with the SVB. Also discuss who carries the income in the first months, whether the partner without an income keeps an account and money of their own, and how you decide together on big expenses.

Married, registered or living together? It can make a difference for your partner's residence permit, for co-insurance in healthcare and for inheritance. If your partner registers in Malta as your family member, a spouse can simply join. A partner you're not married to must bring two years' proof of a durable relationship to the application. Check at your registration and at your healthcare further on in your plan what else applies to you.

Are children coming? How you tell them depends on their age:

• Up to about four: tell them shortly before the move and keep fixed habits, like the bedtime ritual and the cuddly toy in the hand luggage.
• Primary school: tell them well in advance and let them look along: photos of the school, the neighbourhood and the house. Let them choose something, like their room.
• Teenagers: involve them in the decision itself. For them, saying goodbye to friends weighs heaviest. Agree how they keep in touch and when they see their friends again.

In Malta the state school is free, and it belongs to the place where you live. Church and private schools charge fees.

Who learns the language, and when? At the desk you speak English. The south and the interior are Maltese. Often the partner without work needs the language most, and precisely that partner has no colleagues to practise with. Is the English of one of you rusty, or do you want to live in the south? Then plan together who learns which language, preferably before you leave.

In this step you fix when you want to be standing on Malta. Choose that date below. The step-by-step plan works out whether it's feasible with what still has to happen. From that moment it guards the clocks that exist: three months for the registration, thirty days for the rental registration, and the thirty days and twelve months around the car.