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Law / Malta

Data Protection Act, Chapter 586 of the Laws of Malta

Data Protection Act, Cap. 586

A citation is an address, not a summary. The first part names the law; what follows narrows it to the exact section, article or paragraph.

What follows is LexLint's own research summary of this law, not legal advice.

In force since 25 May 2018.

A comprehensive regime rule binding public and private bodies.

As of 24 August 2026.

What it requires

  • Establish a General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Article 6 lawful basis before processing personal data of a person in Malta, including data collected by crawling.

What this law does

Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.

Malta's private-sector regime is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) plus the Data Protection Act, Chapter 586 of the Laws of Malta, in effect since 25 May 2018 alongside the GDPR itself, supplying domestic derogations and procedural rules.

Subsidiary Legislation 586.11 sets the digital age of consent at 13, per secondary commentary; Cap. 586's own Article 33(g) (Minister's regulation-making power) sets the statutory floor for that ministerial discretion at not below thirteen years but does not itself state the currently adopted age.

The Information and Data Protection Commissioner (IDPC) is the supervisory authority; a second designation (Legal Notice 227 of 2025) makes it a market-surveillance authority for specific EU AI Act high-risk categories, including biometrics, an AI-topic matter not addressed here.

Corrected during the #8352 wave 4 review: Cap. 586's own official PDF does yield extractable text (confirmed while sourcing the risk-attribute pins below), so the 'commentary sourced' caveat below no longer holds for every provision; see the Article 9 sibling instrument for the specific correction.

When LexLint raises it

  • crawls_web
  • trains_models
  • deploys_chatbot
  • automated_outreach

Read the law

IDPC official PDF (idpc.org.mt), not independently extracted
secondary commentary (Linklaters, Mondaq) for national specifics

Every line above is drawn from the primary source linked here, read on the date shown. This is a research summary, not legal advice.

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