Advertising and claims for medical devices in Malta
Advertising of, and claims for, medical devices in Malta are governed directly by Article 7 of Regulation (EU) 2017/745, which prohibits the use of text, names, trade marks, pictures and figurative or other signs that may mislead the user or the patient as to the device's intended purpose, safety and performance in the labelling, instructions for use, making available, putting into service and advertising of devices. Malta has adopted no device-specific advertising instrument: the Medical Devices and In-Vitro Diagnostic Medical Devices Provision on the Maltese Market Regulations (S.L. 458.59), which is the whole of the Maltese device provision regime and runs to eleven regulations, contains no advertising provision at all, and the advertising controls of the Medicines Act (Cap. 458) are confined to medicinal products. Advertising of devices outside the device framework falls under the general misleading-advertising rule of the Consumer Affairs Act (Cap. 378): unfair commercial practices are prohibited, a commercial practice is unfair if it is misleading under Article 51C or 51D, and "commercial practice" is defined to include any "commercial communication including advertising and marketing" by a trader directly connected with the promotion, sale or supply of a product to consumers, "product" being any good or service β so a misleading advertisement for a device is caught by that general regime as well as by Article 7.
- The operative rule is Union law: MDR Article 7 applies directly in Malta as a Member State, and its four prohibited misleading effects (points (a) to (d)) need no national transposition.
- S.L. 458.59 contains no advertising provision β verified by reading the instrument in full (citation, interpretation, designation of the competent authority, administration, importation/wholesaling/manufacturing/re-purposing, medical device registered person, issuing of approval, guidelines, monitoring and review, complaints, fines) β so no Maltese device-specific advertising rule exists to record.
- The Medicines Act advertising provisions (Article 31, under the marginal note "Advertising of medicinal products": "A medicinal product may only be advertised in accordance with such conditions as may be established by or under this Act.") are drafted for and confined to medicinal products; Article 111 of the same Act is what carries the device regulations into that Act, and it does so by deeming regulations issued under the Product Safety Act to have been issued under the Medicines Act, not by extending the medicinal-product advertising controls to devices.
- The Consumer Affairs Act layer is consumer-facing and general: it is not device-specific, it does not reproduce MDR Article 7, and it operates through the Director General (Consumer Affairs) and the Consumer Claims Tribunal rather than through the Medicines Authority.
Effective from 2021-05-26
Union layer, read on 2026-09-16 in the consolidated text of Regulation (EU) 2017/745 cited as the source (CELEX 02017R0745-20230320). Quoted exactly as the consolidated text prints it: "trade marks" with a space, and the consolidator's corrigendum markers ("βΊC1 ... β") removed from the quotation; the Official Journal text of 5.5.2017 prints "trademarks" and is otherwise identical, and Article 7 has not been amended since publication. Date of application: Article 123(2) was amended by Article 1(a) of Regulation (EU) 2020/561, which provides verbatim "Article 123 is amended as follows: (a) in paragraph 2, the date '26 May 2020' is replaced by '26 May 2021'"; hence effectiveFrom 2026-09-16 rests on 2021-05-26 as the date from which the MDR applies. National layer, negative limb, verbatim from S.L. 458.59 (L.N. 321 of 2020, 4th August 2020), read in full: the instrument's eleven regulations are "1. The title of these regulations is the Medical Devices and In-Vitro diagnostic Medical Devices Provision on the Maltese Market Regulations.", regulation 2 (Interpretation), "3. The competent authority is designated under these regulations: (a) as the authority in charge of regulating and ensuring compliance and adherence to the applicable local and international laws that apply to medical devices; and (b) as the authority responsible for designation and supervision of notified bodies concerned with medical devices in Malta.", regulation 4 (Administration), "5. (1) No person shall carry out importation, wholesaling, manufacturing or re-purposing in Malta of any medical device which is intended for trade within the European Union and, or the local market prior to obtaining all the necessary approvals, authorisations, licences, permits and, or any notification/s as required by or under these regulations or any other law." (with sub-regulation (2)(a)-(g), including "(f) have a medical device registered person in Malta;" and "(g) insert details of all medical devices which he markets locally in the national medical device database kept by the competent authority."), regulation 6 (Obligation for medical device registered person), regulation 7 (Issuing of approval), regulation 8 (Issue of guidelines), regulation 9 (Monitoring and review of operations), regulation 10 (Obligation of economic operators to transmit complaints to competent authority) and "11. Any person who contravenes any provision of these regulations shall be guilty of an offence and shall on conviction be subject to a fine (multa) of not less than twelve thousand euro (β¬12,000) and not exceeding one hundred and twenty thousand euro (β¬120,000) or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two (2) years, or to both such fine and imprisonment." A whole-text search of that instrument returns zero occurrences of "advertis" and zero of "misleading"; the only two occurrences of "review" are the heading "Monitoring and review of operations" and its text. The Medicines Act limb: Article 111 ("Medical devices and in vitro diagnostic medical devices. Any regulations issued under the Product Safety Act dealing with medical devices and in vitro diagnostic medical devices shall be deemed to have been issued under this Act.", added by Act XXXV.2020.2, cross-referring Cap. 427) is the bridge by which S.L. 458.59 hangs off Cap. 458, and it does not extend the Act's medicinal-product advertising provisions to devices; Article 31 itself reads, verbatim and under the marginal note "Advertising of medicinal products", "A medicinal product may only be advertised in accordance with such conditions as may be established by or under this Act.", and Article 29 (power to make regulations) lists at paragraph (g) "advertising in respect of medicinal products, and the presentation and information contained in the advert", confirming the Act's advertising competence is drafted for medicinal products. Provenance of the Maltese texts quoted in this fact: each was read on 2026-09-16 in the PDF served by legislation.mt for the instrument cited β the site's viewer endpoint /getpdf/<id>, linked from the /eli/... landing page recorded as the source URL β extracted with pdftotext -layout. National layer, positive limb, verbatim from the Consumer Affairs Act (Cap. 378), as amended up to Legal Notice 212 of 2023: "51B. (1) Unfair commercial practices shall be prohibited."; "(3) In particular, a commercial practice shall be unfair if it is misleading in terms of articles 51C and 51D, or aggressive in terms of article 51E."; "51C. A commercial practice shall be regarded as misleading if: (a) it contains false information; or (b) in any way, including its overall presentation, deceives or is likely to deceive the average consumer, even if the information is factually correct ..."; "51D. (1) A commercial practice shall be regarded as misleading if: (a) in its factual context, taking account of all its features and circumstances and the limitations of the communication medium, it omits material information that the average consumer needs, according to the context, to take an informed transactional decision and thereby causes or is likely to cause the average consumer to take a transactional decision that he would not have taken otherwise ..."; and the two definitions that make a device advertisement fall inside this Title: "'commercial practice' means any act, omission, course of conduct or representation, commercial communication including advertising and marketing, by a trader, directly connected with the promotion, sale or supply of a product to consumers; whether it takes place before, during or after a commercial transaction in relation to the product;" and "'product' means any good or service including immovable property, digital service and digital content, as well as rights and obligations;". What was NOT found, and is therefore not asserted: no Maltese measure penalising misleading advertising of a medical device specifically, and no guidance from the Medicines Authority on advertising or claims for devices β the Authority's Medical Devices Forms index (read on 2026-09-16) carries forms for organisation registration, revision or withdrawal, notification, non-CE-marked use, incident reporting, clinical investigations and risk classification, but no advertising or claims procedure.

