Today is Monday, 21 September, and Malta is on holiday. Government offices are closed, the national flag is flying on public buildings, and the country is marking 62 years since independence.
For many residents who arrived from abroad, the day is simply a welcome long weekend at the end of summer. That is fair enough. But 21 September 1964 is not a museum date. It is written into the Constitution as a defined legal term, and a surprising amount of what a resident deals with in Malta today, from citizenship to language to the country's place in the world, still runs back to it.
A holiday written into statute
Malta's national holidays are fixed by law. The National Holidays and other Public Holidays Act, Chapter 252 of the Laws of Malta, lists five of them in article 2:
- 21 September, Jum l-Indipendenza (Independence Day);
- 13 December, Jum ir-Repubblika (Republic Day);
- 31 March, Jum il-Ħelsien (Freedom Day);
- 8 September, Jum il-Vittorja (Victory Day);
- 7 June, the Sette Giugno.
Article 3 makes each of them a public holiday and requires the national flag to be flown on public buildings. Article 4 gives the Prime Minister the task of directing how they are celebrated. The Schedule to the same Act adds nine further public holidays, from New Year's Day and the Feast of St Paul's Shipwreck to the Assumption on 15 August and Christmas, which brings the island to fourteen public holidays a year in addition to Sundays.
There is a practical detail here that employees and employers in Malta notice. Under article 6(c), with effect from 1 January 2021, when a national or public holiday falls on a Saturday or Sunday, it entitles workers to an additional day of vacation leave. This year that rule is not needed for Independence Day. It falls on a Monday.
Read the list of national holidays again and it tells a story in miniature. Two of the five dates, 21 September and 13 December, mark constitutional steps. The others commemorate moments the country chose to remember as its own. Independence sits at the head of the list.
What happened in 1964
The legal mechanics were set in London first. The United Kingdom Parliament passed the Malta Independence Act 1964, which received Royal Assent on 31 July 1964. Its long title describes its purpose as making provision for "the attainment by Malta of fully responsible status within the Commonwealth".
Section 1 did the essential work in two sentences. From a day to be appointed by Order in Council, the government of the United Kingdom would "have no responsibility for the government of Malta", and no Act of the UK Parliament passed on or after that day would extend to Malta as part of its law.
The instrument that brought the new order into being was the Malta Independence Order of 2 September 1964, and the Constitution of Malta is, formally, that Order as amended ever since. Its interpretation article, article 124, contains a definition that still does work today: "the appointed day" means 21st September 1964.
Ten weeks later the new state took its seat in the world. The United Nations lists Malta's date of admission as 1 December 1964.
Where the appointed day still matters
It is easy to assume that a constitutional definition from 1964 has long since been overtaken. It has not. The phrase "the appointed day" appears throughout the Constitution, and it anchors three things that matter to anyone living in Malta.
Citizenship. Chapter III of the Constitution deals with citizenship, and its first article is headed "Persons who become citizens on appointed day". Maltese citizenship, as a legal status of its own, begins on 21 September 1964. Every later route to it, including the modern rules on descent, marriage and naturalisation, builds on that starting point. The same chapter also provides that dual citizenship is permitted in accordance with the law in force.
Territory. Article 1(2) defines the territories of Malta as those comprised in Malta immediately before the appointed day, including the territorial waters, or such territories and waters as Parliament may determine by law.
Supremacy. Article 6 makes the Constitution the supreme law: if any other law is inconsistent with it, the Constitution prevails and the other law is void to the extent of the inconsistency. Every tax rule, residence programme and immigration regulation a newcomer encounters operates beneath that line.
From independence to republic
Independence in 1964 was independence within the Commonwealth. Ten years later the country went a step further. Act LVIII of 1974 substituted Chapter I of the Constitution, which is now headed "The Republic of Malta". Its opening sentence reads: "Malta is a democratic republic founded on work and on respect for the fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual." That is the constitutional step the country marks on 13 December, Republic Day.
The Commonwealth link did not disappear. Article 23 still provides that citizens of Malta, and citizens of the countries listed in the Fourth Schedule, have the status of Commonwealth citizens. For residents from the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and other Commonwealth countries, it is a small but real reminder that the relationship was reshaped in 1964, not severed.
The Constitution also carries a later and very deliberate choice. Article 1(3), in the form amended by Act IV of 1987, declares that Malta is a neutral state pursuing peace, security and social progress by adhering to a policy of non-alignment and refusing to participate in any military alliance. It goes on to rule out foreign military bases on Maltese territory. For an island whose history, as the pieces on the Knights of St John and the Order that built Malta describe, was shaped for centuries by outside powers and their fortifications, that clause is independence carried to its logical end.
A constitution that is still being written
It would be wrong to think of the 1964 text as frozen. The list of amending acts at the head of the consolidated Constitution runs from 1965 to Acts IX and XVI of 2026.
Some of the recent changes are symbolic, and all the more revealing for it. Act XXXIX of 2025 substituted article 4 on the national anthem, which now names "L-Innu Malti" and fixes 27 December as Jum l-Innu Malti. The same Act added a new article 5A: "The Capital City of Malta is Il-Belt Valletta (Città Umilissima)." Sixty-one years after independence, Parliament was still writing the markers of national identity into the country's highest law.
Article 5 on language is older and more practical. Maltese is the national language; Maltese and English are the official languages, and any person may address the administration in either. For a resident, that is the constitutional reason daily life in Malta can be lived in English, and also the reason the Maltese language is far more than folklore. The piece on Maltese and its Arabic roots explores what that means in practice.
Sovereignty in layers
The next great step came four decades later. According to the EU's country profile, Malta has been an EU member state since 1 May 2004, part of the Schengen area since 21 December 2007, and a member of the euro area since 1 January 2008.
Each of those steps pooled a piece of what 1964 had won. Checks at the Schengen area's external borders follow common EU rules. The currency is shared with the rest of the euro area. Large parts of company and financial law arrive as EU legislation. Yet the core of what makes Malta distinctive for people who choose to live here remains national: who becomes a citizen, who may reside and on what terms, and how the country taxes income. The long-running argument over EU-wide tax harmonisation is, at bottom, an argument about how much of the 1964 settlement a small state keeps inside a large union.
That is the position this date supports. Independence did not make Malta large or self-sufficient. It gave a small island the legal capacity to make its own choices, including the choice to share some of them. Every programme, tax rule and residence route that draws foreigners to Malta is an exercise of that capacity.
What the day asks of residents
None of this requires newcomers to become constitutional scholars. It does suggest a few things worth knowing.
It is a public holiday for everyone. Under article 5(4) of the National Holidays Act, Government offices close on public holidays unless the Prime Minister directs otherwise. Plan anything that needs a public office around it, and remember that 13 December, 31 March, 8 September and 7 June carry the same status.
It is the country's own story. Malta's politics, explored in the comparison of Malta Labour and UK Labour, is easier to read once you know the constitutional milestones behind the national calendar: independence in 1964, the republic in 1974, neutrality written into article 1. Understanding the date is part of understanding the island's political temperament.
It explains the English. The ease with which a foreign resident can live, work and deal with the state in English is not an accident of tourism. It is written into article 5 of a constitution that began on 21 September 1964.
Sixty-two years on, the appointed day is still doing its job. It defines who is a citizen, what the territory is, and which law sits above all others. For a country of this size, that is what independence means in practice: the right to write its own rules, and to keep rewriting them.
