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As soon as the application for family reunification has been accepted, family members will be authorised to enter Malta once they are granted a visa.
In practice, problems in issuing documentation may arise in countries with no Maltese representations. This leads to scenarios where applicants must travel to another country in order to apply for the visa at the Maltese representation. Family members must then stay in this country until the visa is issued, inducing further costs for the family.
The Family Reunification Regulations provide that family members shall be granted a first residence permit of at least one year’s duration and shall be renewable.[1] Since 2016, reunited family members are, in practice, granted a residence permit of three years, indicating ‘Dependant family member’.[2]
The family members of the sponsor have access, in the same way as the sponsor, to education, employment, and self-employed activity. While a refugee has access to employment and self-employment without the need for an assessment of the situation of the labour market, said family members are subject to such assessment for the first 12 months following their arrival. They also have access to vocational guidance, initial and further training, and retraining.[3] NGOs report that, in practice, they are very often required to engage with Maltese public authorities regarding cases in which they treat refugee family members as other third-country nationals.
Family members coming to Malta are barred from applying for international protection in their own name.
NGOs have reported that there are instances whereby a beneficiary of international protection in Malta has a child after being granted protection by the IPA. In these cases, the IPA does not issue a protection certificate for that child but issues a letter stating that that child is a family member of a protection beneficiary, based on the argument that a person’s eligibility for international protection does not automatically mean that the children are also so entitled. NGOs commented that, whilst this is not in direct contract with EU law, it does have harmful consequences particularly on children and family unity.
This situation would result in the child having a different status noted on the residence card to their parents and siblings born before arrival to Malta. This is also the case when one of the applicants in a family unit is granted a different status to that of their spouse, either due to an appeal or different times of application or arrival. The result is that in a family unit there could be members who have different statuses, as the IPA does not grant protection to the family as a unit but on an individual basis.
Furthermore, NGOs reported that children in Malta as family members of a protection beneficiary (either following birth here or through family reunification), lose that protection upon reaching majority. That person would then have to regularise their situation independently: international protection; Single Work Permit; Student Residence Permit; Temporary Humanitarian Protection. According to NGOs, this exposes them to a risk of becoming undocumented, as the nexus to their parent’s claim may have become weaker with the passing of time between arrival in Malta and becoming an adult.[4] Furthermore, family members who, regardless of the reason, sever the family tie with the refugee sponsor will also automatically lose their right to remain in Malta as such and would then need to either seek protection in their own names or apply for a residence permit on another ground. NGOs noted that this regime, coupled with the inaccessible naturalisation stream, was extremely problematic.
2024 saw an increase in the number of refugee children affected by this situation and risking losing their documentation. Since Malta does not grant derivative status to family members of international protection beneficiaries, persons children turning 18 are required to seek a legal basis for their ongoing residence in Malta: THP, trafficking, autonomous, international protection, studies- or work-related. NGOs also noted that aged-out children of protection beneficiaries applying for work- or student-related permits are required to fulfil the eligibility criteria of other third-country nationals, criteria that they are often unable to meet: income threshold of a sponsor and presentation of a national passport.
The Family Reunification Regulations[5] provide for an autonomous residence permit to children reaching 18 years of age, yet eligibility conditions render this route applicable to only a small number of persons: minimum five years’ residence, previous residence in Malta on the basis of family reunification. Both aditus and JRS noted that this permit was not accessible for several children of protection beneficiaries, exacerbated by the prolonged duration of family reunification procedures, the duration of residence in Malta of children prior to their turning 18 and its exclusion of children born in Malta to protection beneficiaries. Effectively, most children of protection beneficiaries risked becoming undocumented upon attaining majority. Furthermore, the law does not clarify the nature of extent of entitlements of persons holding this autonomous residence permit.
The Regulations also grant an autonomous residence permit to persons coming to Malta via family reunification where the sponsor dies or where there are “particularly difficult circumstances” such as domestic violence or marriage breakdown.[6]
[1] Regulation 14(2) of the Family Reunification Regulations, S.L. 217.06.
[2] Information provided by Identitá, 29 September 2016.
[3] Regulation 15 of the Family Reunification Regulations, S.L. 217.06.
[4] aditus foundation, Documentation = Employability: Support Services for the Documentation of Various Communities, August 2022, available at https://bit.ly/3JhqJFk
[5] Regulation 16.
[6] Regulation 17.