Malta Cancer Survivors Win ‘Right to be Forgotten’: 5-Year Clean Slate for Loans, Jobs & Insurance

Survivors’ Clean Slate: Malta Backs EU Push to Erase Cancer Debt History After Five Years

Valletta – When Miriam* applied for a small bank loan to open her souvenir kiosk in Sliema last year, she ticked the “previous medical conditions” box without thinking. Two weeks later the letter arrived: higher interest, shorter term, extra insurance. The 38-year-old had been clear of breast cancer for seven years. “It felt like the illness was still punishing me,” she told HOT MALTA. “I wanted to scream, ‘I’m alive, not a risk!’”

On Wednesday, Miriam’s frustration was given a powerful antidote. Health Minister Jo Etienne Abela announced that Malta will transpose the EU’s “Right to be Forgotten” directive, allowing cancer survivors to request the erasure of their medical history from credit and insurance files five years after the end of treatment – ten for a narrow list of high-risk cancers. Once forgotten, the data cannot be used to hike premiums, deny mortgages or limit job prospects.

The reform, already piloted in France, Belgium and the Netherlands, lands on an island where 2,500 new cancer cases are registered every year and where, according to the National Cancer Registry, 62 % of patients survive at least five years. “That’s 1,500 Maltese and Gozitan citizens annually who could finally close the chapter,” Abela said on the steps of the Auberge de Castille, flanked by Europa Donna Malta and the Caritas social justice arm.

But beyond the numbers, the measure strikes at a uniquely Maltese tension: the village feasts that celebrate miraculous recoveries, yet whisper about “il-mard ta’ qabilha” (“her previous illness”) when marriage prospects or employment loom. “We clap in the church square when the bell rings for remission, then cross ourselves when the same person asks to guarantee our son’s flat,” remarked Rev. Anton D’Amato, chaplain at Mater Dei’s oncology ward. “This law drags the stigma into the open and legally dismantles it.”

Insiders say the cultural shift has been brewing since 2021, when Marlene Farrugia’s private member’s bill on IVF equality forced parliament to confront how medical data can perpetuate inequality. “MPs heard stories of women denied teaching posts because HR departments ‘knew’ they’d had cancer,” recalled lawyer Carla Camilleri, who advised the parliamentary health committee. “Once the GDPR door was open, oncology patients asked, ‘Why not us?’”

The banking sector, historically jittery about anything that skews actuarial tables, has negotiated a transition window. APS Bank CEO Marcel Cassar confirmed that algorithms will be recalibrated by 2025, but warned that “risk doesn’t vanish; it is redistributed.” Consumer advocates retort that pooled-risk models in France saw only a 0.3 % rise in default rates – a price worth paying, says Janet Mifsud, country manager of Europa Donna. “We’re not asking for charity, just the same actuarial fresh start given to someone who’s never been sick.”

For Gozitan fisherman Ċensu Galea, 55, the timing is poetic. Next May marks five years since his final throat-cancer radiotherapy session. “I want to refinance the boat, paint her new colours, maybe take tourists out for catch-and-release,” he said outside the Xlendi parish office where he’d just collected the application forms. “I don’t want the bank seeing me as ‘poor Ċensu who had cancer’. I want to be ‘Captain Ċensu with the prettiest luzzu in the channel’.”

Back in Sliema, Miriam has already emailed her insurer. She plans to reopen negotiations for the kiosk lease under the new rules. “The tumour is gone, but the scarlet C followed me like the Knights’ cross on a limestone wall,” she laughed, gesturing toward the Tigné fortifications. “Now I can finally whitewash it.”

Conclusion:
Malta’s embrace of the Right to be Forgotten is more than a bureaucratic tweak; it is a cultural reckoning. By severing the electronic tether between past illness and future opportunity, the island is choosing to celebrate survival rather than suspect it. In a country where festa fireworks light up the sky for every patron saint, the law offers survivors their own kind of luminous finale – one where the explosions mark not disease, but deliverance.