🇲🇹 Malta

Malta is a Mediterranean archipelago of 520,000 people — the EU's smallest member state at just 316 square kilometers, but one of the most densely populated countries in the world at 1,650 people per square kilometer. GDP is about $20 billion. The country has reinvented itself as a hub for online gaming (iGaming companies generate about 12% of GDP), financial services, and film production (Game of Thrones, Gladiator, and Troy were partly filmed here). Malta's strategic location has made it a prize for every Mediterranean power — Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, Normans, Knights of St. John, Napoleon, and the British all controlled it. The country withstood one of history's greatest sieges in 1565.

iGaming, financial services, tourism, and manufacturing (particularly pharmaceuticals and electronics) are the main sectors. The country attracts about 3 million tourists annually — six times its population. Malta's citizenship-by-investment program has been controversial but lucrative. The country has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the EU at about 3%. English and Maltese are both official languages, giving it an advantage in attracting international business.

Malta's Megalithic Temples are the oldest free-standing structures in the world — older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids by about 1,000 years. The country's Azure Window, a famous natural arch, collapsed into the sea in 2017 — it had appeared in Game of Thrones just years earlier. Maltese is the only Semitic language written in Latin script and the only Semitic language that's an official EU language.

Malta's iGaming and financial services pivot has been remarkably successful for such a tiny country. The risk is reputational — money laundering scandals and the 2017 assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia have tarnished the brand.