Malta

How do Indian citizens apply for the Malta Nomad Residence Permit?

Worth knowing: Malta is the rare European nomad route where the permit is never lodged at a consulate. An Indian applicant files the whole thing on Residency Malta's online portal from home, pays EUR 300 by bank transfer, and only meets a consular counter afterwards, for the visa that lets them physically arrive. That ordering is the single most important thing to grasp, because the EUR 300 is non-refundable and is spent before anyone has looked at whether you can get in. India is in Annex I of Regulation 2018/1806 and appears by name on Residency Malta's own list of nationalities that need an entry visa, so after final approval the Central Visa Unit routes you to a national D visa through the Visa Extended Service, available in 13 Indian cities, all run by VFS Global, all decided back in Malta rather than at the High Commission in New Delhi. The documentary sting is the police conduct certificate: Malta exempts Australia, New Zealand, the USA, the UK and Canada from apostille, and India is not on that list, so the PCC needs an MEA apostille. That apostille works because Malta never objected to India's 2005 accession to the Hague Convention, unlike Germany, whose objection still stands and forces legalisation on the Germany route. Two things are easier for an Indian applicant than for most non-English-speaking nationalities: the RPO-issued PCC is already in English, so Malta's translation rule does not bite, and the RPO is a central authority, which matches Malta's 'national/federal' wording better than a state police certificate would. The money mechanics are where India is different: the EUR 300 must leave the main applicant's own account, and any outward transfer by a resident individual runs under the RBI's Liberalised Remittance Scheme, capped at USD 250,000 per financial year and requiring a Form A2 declaration of purpose.