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Malta

4 buyers · 0 tenders · checked 2026-09-14

No railway; EU exempt; only programme proposed underground light metro three lines published October 2021, no decision since; zero rail TED activity.

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0Railways operational
0Metro systems operating
4Buyers tracked
0Tenders tracked
Live pipeline
No rail procurement pipeline: no Maltese buyer has advertised a rail contract on TED, and nothing was open for bids on either TED deadline field on 14 September 2026. The proposed Malta Metro is the only rail programme on any source reachable in this pass and Transport Malta publishes no capital cost for it.

Key figures

No railway0 km of railwayNo railway, tram or metro operates anywhere in Malta, and the Atlas carries this file for completeness of the European Union edition so that a subscriber does not read an empty country as a sourcing failure. There is no infrastructure manager, no railway undertaking, no national safety authority and no rail tender, because there is no railway for any of them to exist for.
2 sources · all primary
  • ● Official Journal of the European Union · Directive (EU) 2016/798 on railway safety (recast) — Article 33(4) (published 2016-05-11 · checked 2026-09-14)
  • ● Official Journal of the European Union · Regulation (EU) 2024/1679 on Union guidelines for the development of the trans-European transport network — recital (98), Article 65 (Exemptions) and the Annex II node table (published 2024-06-28 · checked 2026-09-14)
Three EU rail instruments name…Named and exempted in three EU rail instruments — partially, not whollyThree EU rail instruments name Cyprus and Malta and disapply their obligations while neither has a railway, and each disapplies a different amount. Directive 2012/34/EU on the single European railway area, Article 64(2), final subparagraph: 'The obligations for transposition and implementation of Chapters II and IV of this Directive shall not apply to Cyprus and Malta for as long as no railway system is established within their territory' — Chapters II and IV only, not the whole Directive; recital (85) gives the reason, that such Member States 'would be subject to a disproportionate and pointless obligation'. The interoperability Directive (EU) 2016/797, Article 57(5), disapplies a named list of Articles — 13, 14(1) to (8), (11) and (12), 15(1) to (9), 16(1), 19 to 26, 45, 46 and 47, 49(1) to (4) and 54 — 'for as long as no rail system is established within their territories'. The railway safety Directive (EU) 2016/798, Article 33(4), disapplies the whole Directive on the same condition. Both 2016 Directives carry the same trigger, in words that are identical as far as the deadline and then diverge: 'as soon as a public or private entity submits an official application to build a railway line with a view to its operation by one or more railway undertakings, the Member States concerned shall put in place measures to implement' the provisions — 'within two years of receipt of the application' in Directive (EU) 2016/797, 'within 2 years of the receipt of the application' in Directive (EU) 2016/798.
3 sources · all primary
  • ● Official Journal of the European Union · Directive 2012/34/EU establishing a single European railway area (recast) — recital (85) and Article 64(2), final subparagraph (published 2012-11-21 · checked 2026-09-14)
  • ● Official Journal of the European Union · Directive (EU) 2016/797 on the interoperability of the rail system within the European Union — Article 57(5) (published 2016-05-11 · checked 2026-09-14)
  • ● Official Journal of the European Union · Directive (EU) 2016/798 on railway safety (recast) — Article 33(4) (published 2016-05-11 · checked 2026-09-14)
Malta is on the trans-European…On the TEN-T network through ports and airports; the rail provisions are disappliedMalta is on the trans-European transport network through its ports and its airport, and the Regulation expressly takes the rail provisions off it. Regulation (EU) 2024/1679, Article 65 (Exemptions): 'The provisions relating to railways, and in particular any requirement to connect airports and ports to railways, as well as the provisions related to multimodal freight terminals shall not apply to Cyprus, Malta, islands and outermost regions for as long as no railway system is established within their territory.' Recital (98) states the same. The Annex II node table lists, for MT, Cirkewwa (Comprehensive), Marsaxlokk (Core), Mgarr (Comprehensive) and Valletta as an urban node with a Core port and the Core airport 'Malta — Luqa'. The words 'Malta' and 'Cyprus' occur four and three times respectively in the entire Regulation — recital (98), Article 65 (twice: once in the rail-provisions paragraph quoted above and once in the paragraph disapplying the safe-and-secure-parking provisions) and, for Malta, the Annex II row — and neither country appears anywhere in the Annex III alignment of any European Transport Corridor. There is no Maltese rail corridor to invent.
1 source · primary
  • ● Official Journal of the European Union · Regulation (EU) 2024/1679 on Union guidelines for the development of the trans-European transport network — recital (98), Article 65 (Exemptions) and the Annex II node table (published 2024-06-28 · checked 2026-09-14)
Transport Malta's own scheme si…Three proposed lines: about 16 km / 12.5 km / 7 km, with 11 / 9 / 6 stationsTransport Malta's own scheme site publishes three proposed underground light metro lines for the Principal Urban Area: a Red Line, Naxxar to Pembroke/Sliema, 'approximately 16 kilometres long and includes a total of 11 stations', served by a depot at Ta' Qali; a Blue Line, Mater Dei to Cospicua/Airport, 'approximately 12.5 kilometres long and includes a total of 9 stations', with a spur to Malta International Airport; and a Green Line, Birkirkara to Valletta, 'approximately 7 kilometres and includes 6 stations'. Its own text on the preferred route reads: 'The metro network includes for three lines overlapping at three interchange locations allowing transfer between the different lines.' The site states the proposal follows the recommendation in the Transport Masterplan 2025 to build a mass rapid transit system for the region, and that 'In 2017, supported by international consultants Arup, we embarked on a mass transport study to investigate the feasibility of constructing an underground Metro system for Malta.'
1 source · primary
  • ● Transport Malta · Malta Metro — the scheme's own site (metro.mt), Story section: 'In 2017, supported by international consultants Arup, we embarked on a mass transport study to investigate the feasibility of constructing an underground Metro system for Malta.' Read from the site's application bundle at /static/js/main.2061f46d.js. (published 2021-10 · checked 2026-09-14)
Transport Malta's own figures f…EUR 2.0bn net value over 60 years; benefit-cost ratio 1.4Transport Malta's own figures for the scheme: 'Over the 60-year appraisal period, the net value of the scheme to the Maltese economy is projected to be approximately EUR 2.0bn. Therefore, the benefit-cost ratio (BCR) is 1.4 (i.e. for each EUR 1 invested in the project, EUR 1.4 of benefits are expected to be generated over the long term).' No capital cost for the scheme is published anywhere on the site. Its two study documents, a Feasibility Study and a Strategic Business Case, are dated October 2021 on the site's own timeline and are embedded from a third-party publishing service; all three of their endpoints now fail, so the studies themselves could not be read and no capital figure is carried here.
1 source · primary
  • ● Transport Malta · Malta Metro — the scheme's own site (metro.mt), Story section: 'In 2017, supported by international consultants Arup, we embarked on a mass transport study to investigate the feasibility of constructing an underground Metro system for Malta.' Read from the site's application bundle at /static/js/main.2061f46d.js. (published 2021-10 · checked 2026-09-14)
The last step the scheme's own…Published for consultation October 2021; no decision published sinceThe last step the scheme's own site records is 'Study Publication, October 2021'. Its closing text says the next step is further research including geotechnical and seismic studies, then stakeholder consultation and market soundings and a review of the initial outline business case, and that 'With the benefit of this consultation process and input from all stakeholders, we will make a decision on progressing to the Statutory Planning Process. It is envisaged that the Metro network will be developed and delivered on a phased basis.' No official body has published a decision since, on any source reachable in this pass, and the Atlas therefore records the scheme's status as exactly that: published for consultation, awaiting a decision, with no procurement advertised.
1 source · primary
  • ● Transport Malta · Malta Metro — the scheme's own site (metro.mt), Story section: 'In 2017, supported by international consultants Arup, we embarked on a mass transport study to investigate the feasibility of constructing an underground Metro system for Malta.' Read from the site's application bundle at /static/js/main.2061f46d.js. (published 2021-10 · checked 2026-09-14)
The case Transport Malta makes…EUR 274 million a yearThe case Transport Malta makes for the scheme rests on congestion: its own text states that delays as a result of traffic congestion 'are estimated to be three times the EU average, costing our economy in excess of EUR 274 million (3% of GDP) every year'.
1 source · primary
  • ● Transport Malta · Malta Metro — the scheme's own site (metro.mt), Story section: 'In 2017, supported by international consultants Arup, we embarked on a mass transport study to investigate the feasibility of constructing an underground Metro system for Malta.' Read from the site's application bundle at /static/js/main.2061f46d.js. (published 2021-10 · checked 2026-09-14)
A sweep of Tenders Electronic D…0 rail notices in 52 rail-CPV hitsA sweep of Tenders Electronic Daily for Maltese buyers across the rail CPV set returns 52 notices in the whole archive and not one of them is rail scope. The closest is a EUR 3,640 award by Transport Malta on 14 November 2025 under CPV 34947100 'Sleepers' — 'Removal of 20 exisiting damaged wooden sleepers and installation of new wooden sleepers along Gillieru Menqa slipway', described on the notice as being 'for fishing vessels use', awarded to NGS. The rest are CPV collisions: office chairs bought under 34946240, the code for rail chairs and chair wedges; curtain and handrail steel bought under 34941000 'Rails'; delivery vans bought under 34622500, the code for luggage vans and special-purpose railway vans; and building structural works bought under 45234170 'Locomotive-substations construction works'. The largest buyer in the sweep is the Sectoral Procurement Directorate, which published 24 of the 52 notices, among them the 34941000 handrail steel and the 45234170 structural works named above; the Department of Contracts published 14, every one of them a partition-wall, workstation or van contract; Transport Malta published one, the slipway award. Nothing was open for bids on either TED deadline field on 14 September 2026.
4 sources · all primary
  • ● Tenders Electronic Daily — Search API v3 · Rail CPV sweep for Maltese buyers, run 14 September 2026. POST https://api.ted.europa.eu/v3/notices/search with query: buyer-country="MLT" AND classification-cpv IN (34600000 34620000 34630000 34940000 34941000 45234100 45234000 45234115 60200000 71311230 50220000). Returns 52 notices in the whole archive (earliest 158309-2017, latest 590375-2026), 16 of them published on or after 1 January 2024. The same query with deadline-receipt-tender-date-lot>=20260914 and, separately, with deadline-receipt-request-date-lot>=20260914 returns 0 notices on both fields; the same open-today query run against buyer-country="AUT" returns 4, which is the control that shows the deadline filter works. Buyer-name sweeps buyer-name ~ "Transport Malta" (164 notices ever, 31 published in 2026 to 14 September), buyer-name ~ "Infrastructure Malta" (206 ever, 18 in 2026) and buyer-name ~ "Malta Public Transport" (0 ever); intersected with the rail CPV set, Transport Malta returns 1 notice and Infrastructure Malta returns 0. Title sweeps on buyer-country="MLT" return 12 notices containing 'metro', 10 containing 'railway', 12 containing 'rail' and 2 containing 'tram', every one of which is a multilingual CPV heading (for example 'Construction work for pipelines, communication and power lines, for highways, roads, airfields and railways') or an unrelated product, and none of which is rail scope. The Infrastructure Malta buyer-name sweep also returns prior information notice 547288-2018 of 13 December 2018, CPV 45221246, 'Undersea tunnel construction work'. (published 2026-09-14 · checked 2026-09-14)
  • ● Tenders Electronic Daily · Transport Malta — TM Quote 051/2025, removal of 20 existing damaged wooden sleepers and installation of new wooden sleepers along Gillieru Menqa slipway — contract award notice 757107-2025 (published 2025-11-14 · checked 2026-09-14)
  • ● Tenders Electronic Daily · Sectoral Procurement Directorate — SPD5/2025/065, structural works, classified under CPV 45234170 'Locomotive-substations construction works' — notice 56225-2026 (published 2026-01-26 · checked 2026-09-14)
  • ● Tenders Electronic Daily · Sectoral Procurement Directorate — SPD2/2026/016, manufacture or repair and installation of hot dipped galvanised steel, classified under CPV 34941000 'Rails' and published under the heading 'Hanging rails or holders' — notice 590375-2026 (published 2026-08-27 · checked 2026-09-14)
Malta's national portal is the…Searches CAPTCHA-gated; the opened-bids register is openMalta's national portal is the Department of Contracts' ePPS at etenders.gov.mt, and it is shut in one place and open in another. Both its simple and its advanced search require a CAPTCHA: posting a title search to /epps/viewCFTSAction.do returns the search form again with 'An error has occurred: Captcha mismatch, please try again', and /epps/prepareCurrentOpportunities.do renders the prompt 'Please type the code shown below' with no listing behind it. The portal's opened-bids register is not gated. /epps/common/viewOpenedTenders.do — 'Processes of Opened Bids' — returns HTTP 200 to a plain request with no cookie, no session and no spoofed user-agent, and lists 53,252 opened-bid processes with the call-for-tenders title, the reference number, the contracting authority, the tenders submission deadline, the procurement method, a link to the opened bids, the award date and the status. It is sortable on every column (d-3680181-s=title.keyword) and paginated across 5,326 pages (d-3680181-p=N). What it does not do, unlike the Cypriot build of the same European Dynamics product, is offer a title search: the page renders no search form, and title, Title, cftTitle, searchValue and keyword all return the unfiltered 53,252, by GET and by POST alike. The register can therefore be paged and sorted but not queried, and what the Atlas ran on it is a prefix probe, not a sweep: on 14 September 2026 the register was sorted by title and read at the TRAM, RAIL, METRO and LIGHT RAIL neighbourhoods. Nothing rail is in any of them. The nearest title to RAIL is 'Railing, Paving and Fencing Works, Xghajra Local Council' (XJR04/2018), and the sort runs straight from it to 'Rain Water Drain and Finishing Works'; TRAM falls between 'Tramadol 100mg Injections' and 'Tranexamic Acid 500mg injections'; METRO between 'Metrecide sterilizing solution' and a schools reference series; and LIGHT RAIL between 'Light Source, Endoscope and Cable' and 'Lighting of Streets during Nadur Carnival 2023'. A probe on title prefixes catches only what a buyer put at the front of a title, which is why the Maltese procurement record in this file rests on TED as well as on the register. The portal's own footer was stamped 'Last update: 14 September 2026' when read.
3 sources · all primary
  • ● Department of Contracts, Malta · Electronic Public Procurement System (ePPS) — 'Processes of Opened Bids', the portal's public opened-bids register at /epps/common/viewOpenedTenders.do. Answers HTTP 200 to a plain request with no cookie, no session and no spoofed user-agent, and lists 53,252 opened-bid processes across 5,326 pages with CfT title, reference number, contracting authority, tenders submission deadline, procurement method, an opened-bids link, award date and status. Sortable on every column (d-3680181-s=title.keyword, caUniqueCfTNumber.keyword, caName.keyword, submissionDeadline, procedure, awardDate, status) and paginated on d-3680181-p=N. It renders no search form: title, Title, cftTitle, searchValue, keyword and searchKey all return the unfiltered 53,252, by GET and by POST alike. Read and probed by title prefix on 14 September 2026. (published 2026-09-14 · checked 2026-09-14)
  • ● Department of Contracts, Malta · Electronic Public Procurement System (ePPS) — etenders.gov.mt home and search pages (published 2026-09-14 · checked 2026-09-14)
  • ● Department of Contracts, Malta · ePPS Contact Us — helpdesk address, telephone and front-office hours (published 2026 · checked 2026-09-14)

Buyers

BuyerTypeTendersContracts awarded
Department of ContractsRegulator / standards00
Infrastructure MaltaDevelopment authority00
Ministry for Transport, Infrastructure and Public WorksNational rail HQ00
Transport MaltaTransit authority00

Cities

CityNetwork statusNetworks
Vallettano railway, tram or metro. Valletta is listed in Annex II to Regulation (EU) 2024/1679 as a TEN-T urban node with a Core port and the Core airport 'Malta — Luqa', and Article 65 of the same Regulation disapplies the rail provisions, including any requirement to connect airports and ports to railways, to Malta. Transport Malta's proposed Green Line would run Birkirkara to Valletta, about 7 km with 6 stations — a proposal published for consultation in October 2021, not a project in delivery.Malta Metro Green Line, Birkirkara to Valletta (proposed, published for consultation October 2021); Malta Metro Blue Line, Mater Dei to Cospicua with a spur to Malta International Airport (proposed); Malta Metro Red Line, Naxxar to Pembroke/Sliema (proposed)

Players with a footprint here

PlayerKindFootprint
ArupEngineering consultantProject presence

Withheld in the free surface

  • Market narrative

Full detail withheld: 1 field. In the European Union edition · See a fully open example

  • Composition
  • Methodology note

Full detail withheld: 2 fields. In the European Union edition · See a fully open example

Sources

  • ● Official Journal of the European Union · Directive 2012/34/EU establishing a single European railway area (recast) — recital (85) and Article 64(2), final subparagraph (published 2012-11-21 · checked 2026-09-14)
  • ● Official Journal of the European Union · Directive (EU) 2016/797 on the interoperability of the rail system within the European Union — Article 57(5) (published 2016-05-11 · checked 2026-09-14)
  • ● Official Journal of the European Union · Directive (EU) 2016/798 on railway safety (recast) — Article 33(4) (published 2016-05-11 · checked 2026-09-14)
  • ● Department of Contracts, Malta · Electronic Public Procurement System (ePPS) — etenders.gov.mt home and search pages (published 2026-09-14 · checked 2026-09-14)
  • ● Department of Contracts, Malta · ePPS 'OCDS policy' page, linked from the portal footer, and the DoC OCDS Publication Policy v1.0 it serves at /epps/docs/DoC_OCDS_Publication_Policy_v1.0.docx: the Department 'has adopted the OCDS' and 'will provide a platform for the publication of public procurement contractual data under the OCDS' through www.etenders.gov.mt, outputting data that validates the OCDS JSON Schema 'through outputting structured files, and/or providing an API'. Both the page and the policy document return HTTP 200 to a plain request; no public OCDS data endpoint was located in this pass. (published 2026-09-14 · checked 2026-09-14)
  • ● Department of Contracts, Malta · Electronic Public Procurement System (ePPS) — 'Processes of Opened Bids', the portal's public opened-bids register at /epps/common/viewOpenedTenders.do. Answers HTTP 200 to a plain request with no cookie, no session and no spoofed user-agent, and lists 53,252 opened-bid processes across 5,326 pages with CfT title, reference number, contracting authority, tenders submission deadline, procurement method, an opened-bids link, award date and status. Sortable on every column (d-3680181-s=title.keyword, caUniqueCfTNumber.keyword, caName.keyword, submissionDeadline, procedure, awardDate, status) and paginated on d-3680181-p=N. It renders no search form: title, Title, cftTitle, searchValue, keyword and searchKey all return the unfiltered 53,252, by GET and by POST alike. Read and probed by title prefix on 14 September 2026. (published 2026-09-14 · checked 2026-09-14)
  • ● Transport Malta · Malta Metro — the scheme's own site (metro.mt), Story section: 'In 2017, supported by international consultants Arup, we embarked on a mass transport study to investigate the feasibility of constructing an underground Metro system for Malta.' Read from the site's application bundle at /static/js/main.2061f46d.js. (published 2021-10 · checked 2026-09-14)
  • ● Tenders Electronic Daily — Search API v3 · Rail CPV sweep for Maltese buyers, run 14 September 2026. POST https://api.ted.europa.eu/v3/notices/search with query: buyer-country="MLT" AND classification-cpv IN (34600000 34620000 34630000 34940000 34941000 45234100 45234000 45234115 60200000 71311230 50220000). Returns 52 notices in the whole archive (earliest 158309-2017, latest 590375-2026), 16 of them published on or after 1 January 2024. The same query with deadline-receipt-tender-date-lot>=20260914 and, separately, with deadline-receipt-request-date-lot>=20260914 returns 0 notices on both fields; the same open-today query run against buyer-country="AUT" returns 4, which is the control that shows the deadline filter works. Buyer-name sweeps buyer-name ~ "Transport Malta" (164 notices ever, 31 published in 2026 to 14 September), buyer-name ~ "Infrastructure Malta" (206 ever, 18 in 2026) and buyer-name ~ "Malta Public Transport" (0 ever); intersected with the rail CPV set, Transport Malta returns 1 notice and Infrastructure Malta returns 0. Title sweeps on buyer-country="MLT" return 12 notices containing 'metro', 10 containing 'railway', 12 containing 'rail' and 2 containing 'tram', every one of which is a multilingual CPV heading (for example 'Construction work for pipelines, communication and power lines, for highways, roads, airfields and railways') or an unrelated product, and none of which is rail scope. The Infrastructure Malta buyer-name sweep also returns prior information notice 547288-2018 of 13 December 2018, CPV 45221246, 'Undersea tunnel construction work'. (published 2026-09-14 · checked 2026-09-14)
  • ● Tenders Electronic Daily · Transport Malta — TM Quote 051/2025, removal of 20 existing damaged wooden sleepers and installation of new wooden sleepers along Gillieru Menqa slipway — contract award notice 757107-2025 (published 2025-11-14 · checked 2026-09-14)

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