Is my employer allowed to monitor my personal emails on the company laptop?

Employers in Malta can generally monitor company-owned equipment and systems, but this is not unrestricted, since it must comply with data protection principles under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which applies directly in Malta, and any monitoring should generally be proportionate, transparent, and clearly communicated to employees in advance through a proper workplace privacy or IT usage policy, rather than conducted covertly. Monitoring genuinely personal communications, particularly a personal email account accessed on a work device, raises additional privacy concerns beyond ordinary monitoring of work-related activity, and the employer would need a specific, justifiable, and proportionate reason for extending monitoring that far, properly disclosed to you beforehand. Check whether you were given any IT or acceptable use policy when you started that mentioned monitoring, since this affects whether proper transparency requirements were met. If you believe the monitoring was excessive, undisclosed, or disproportionate, you can raise a complaint with the Information and Data Protection Commissioner, which oversees GDPR compliance in Malta, in addition to raising the matter directly with your employer.