Malta Investing in Skills: What Employers Can Fund, and the Deadlines

Investing in Skills is Malta's main employer training grant, administered by Jobsplus and co-financed by the European Social Fund Plus, the Maltese Government and employers under Malta's 2021–2027 Operational Programme. The figures and rules below come from the scheme's Implementation and Guidance Notes, Version 1.2, issued 1 March 2025.

The exclusion that catches compliance training

Start here, because it determines whether your training is fundable at all: training required by national mandatory standards is excluded. So is anything delivered as an information session, meeting, conference, seminar or team-building event.

For employers with compliance obligations this is a sharper line than it first appears. Training you must do by law is not fundable. Training that takes staff above that floor — deeper technical capability, professional CPD, qualifications — generally is. The practical consequence is that an application describing a course as meeting a statutory requirement is arguing itself out of eligibility, while the same course framed as professional development beyond the minimum may qualify. The scheme is designed to fund upskilling, not compliance baseline.

Other exclusions worth knowing: training bought from a company with more than 50% linked shareholding, internal training, free training, SEC and MATSEC courses, exam and assessment time, and work placements.

Who can apply

Most employers are eligible regardless of legal form. The exceptions are local councils, public entities, government departments, and entities where the Government holds more than 50% shareholding. Projects must be implemented in Malta or Gozo, or for their direct benefit, and trainees must be formally employed by the beneficiary during the training.

For entities carrying out economic activity, three further bars apply: undertakings in difficulty, sectors excluded under Article 1 of the General Block Exemption Regulation, and applicants with an outstanding recovery order for illegal aid.

What you get back

Aid intensity depends on the size of the undertaking:

Large (more than 250 employees) — 50%. Medium (up to 250 employees, turnover up to €50 million and/or balance sheet up to €43 million) — 60%. Micro (fewer than 10 employees, turnover and/or balance sheet up to €2 million) — 70%.

For small undertakings (fewer than 50 employees, turnover and/or balance sheet up to €10 million) the guidance notes are ambiguous: a 70% figure appears in the tables but is not unambiguously tied to that row. Confirm the small-undertaking rate with Jobsplus before building a budget on it rather than assuming either 60% or 70%.

Eligible costs are external trainer personnel costs for hours actually spent training, trainer and trainee operating costs such as travel, and trainee personnel costs for training hours — plus a 7% flat rate for general indirect costs added on top and included in the co-financed base.

The caps that shape how you design a programme

A maximum of 10 trainees is reimbursed per training group, pro-rated where a group is shared between beneficiaries. Non-accredited classroom or live online training is reimbursed for up to 25 contact hours per trainee; accredited training can exceed that, up to the approved contact hours. Trainer fees are capped at 8 hours per day and 40 hours per week, with the same limits on trainee personnel costs. Air travel is reimbursed at fixed rates per round trip per participant, from €211 for 100–499 km up to €1,735 for 8,000 km or more.

Two design implications follow. First, accreditation materially raises the funding ceiling, because it lifts the 25-hour cap. Second, cohorts above ten people need splitting across groups or applications if every trainee is to be funded.

Timing, and why it is the most common failure

The scheme budget is approximately €4 million including indirect costs, allocated first-come, first-served. That makes timing both a compliance matter and a competitive one.

Applications are submitted electronically through the Jobsplus website, and only the latest version submitted is acknowledged. Training may only start after the application has been submitted and acknowledged — starting earlier is at the employer's own risk. Jobsplus asks for submission preferably at least 21 calendar days before training starts and no later than 7 calendar days before; applications arriving inside 7 days are not approved. Each application covers a single training programme and the trainee list is fixed at submission.

The closing dates are firm: last application 31 December 2026, subject to available funds, with training completed by 30 June 2027. Claims follow within 5 weeks of training end for attendance-certificate projects or 8 weeks for achievement-certificate projects, and all claims must be in by 31 August 2027.

Evidence you will need at claim stage

A request for reimbursement with a signed Financial Identification Form; attendance sheets signed by trainees and trainers, using Template A for classroom and Template B for online sessions, with screenshots and endorsements for online delivery; certificates or result slips, ideally showing start and end dates; boarding passes for any air travel; a participant report and a Common Immediate Result Indicator report signed by trainees; and a photograph of the Investing in Skills publicity poster displayed somewhere visible.

That last item is a genuine claim condition rather than a courtesy, and it is easy to reach the claim stage without a photograph of a poster nobody put up.

The state aid basis

For entities carrying out economic activity the scheme operates under the General Block Exemption Regulation, Commission Regulation (EU) No 651/2014 as amended. The guidance references Article 6 on incentive effect — which is why training cannot begin before acknowledgement — Article 8 on cumulation with other aid, and Article 9(1)(c) on public disclosure of awards above €100,000. De minimis rules are not cited.

How Malta compares

Malta's model — apply first, fund a proportion, cap the hours — sits between two systems readers may already know. Skillnet Ireland funding works through networks rather than direct employer application, and the UK apprenticeship levy is a levy-drawdown rather than a grant. For Maltese employers specifically, the professional obligations that sit alongside funded upskilling include MIA's CPE requirements and the ACCA-MIA joint scheme route and the FIAU implementing procedures for accountants — the latter being a useful illustration of the mandatory-versus-upskilling distinction, since AML training required by the implementing procedures sits on the excluded side of the line while advanced financial-crime capability generally does not. Our CPD courses are accredited, which matters here because accreditation lifts the 25-hour reimbursement cap.