Malta must keep poverty in check as “higher than average increases” were being registered, the European Commission warned.

The latest Joint Employment Report, published in Brussels yesterday, notes that, in 2013, Malta registered the third largest increase in the number of those at-risk-of-poverty among the 28 EU member states.

“Among the countries with relatively lower at-risk-of-poverty levels, the situation in Malta and Sweden was to watch, in view of much higher than average increases,” the report says.

The Commission defines those at-risk-of-poverty as people whose income is below 60 per cent of the national median after adding social benefits.

The situation in Malta and Sweden was to watch, in view of much higher than average increases

According to the report, while the average increase in the EU of those falling in the category of at-risk-of-poverty stood at just 0.1 per cent in 2013, the growth reached 1.2 per cent in Malta compared to the year before.

The only countries that registered a higher year-on-year increase than Malta were Cyprus (2.2 per cent) and Portugal (1.5) per cent.

According to the report, 13.6 per cent of those aged 18 to 64 years in Malta were at-risk-of-poverty in the year under review compared to 12.4 in 2012.

Although rising, the number of people at risk of poverty in Malta was still lower than the EU average, which, in 2013, stood at 16.4 per cent. With regard to employment, the report says that Malta seems to be doing well and is managing to create enough jobs to keep unemployment levels down.

Reflecting a booming economy, Malta’s unemployment levels dropped to 5.7 per cent in the first half of this year.

Although unemployment on the island was much lower than the EU average, which until the middle of this year stood at 9.7 per cent, the report notes that Malta’s decrease in the jobless rate stood at 0.3 per cent during the first semester of 2015 compared to the EU average of 0.7 per cent.

The report names Germany as the best performer where it comes to lowering unemployment while Malta, together with another 13 member states, is described as achieving a “better than average performance”.

At the same time, the Commission advises Malta to pull up its socks when it comes to youth who are neither in employment, education, nor training (the so-called Neets). While progress was registered across the EU last year when compared to previous years, in Malta the number of youths falling in this category grew. While the island had a Neet rate of 9.9 per cent in 2013, the rate grew to 10.5 per cent in 2014.

The opposite happened in the EU, where the average Neet rate dropped from 13 per cent in 2013 to 12.5 per cent the following year.

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