Is it a crime in Malta to record someone without their consent?

Whether recording a conversation without the other person's knowledge is itself a criminal offence in Malta depends significantly on the specific circumstances, including where and how the recording took place, and general principles under the Criminal Code, Chapter 9 of the Laws of Malta, alongside data protection obligations under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which applies in Malta, both come into play, since recording someone without consent can raise both criminal privacy concerns in certain contexts and separate data protection issues regarding the processing of personal data. As a general matter, being a participant in your own conversation and recording it for your own personal, non-commercial purposes, such as keeping a private record, is often treated differently and more leniently than covertly recording or surveilling someone in a place where they have a genuine expectation of privacy without any connection to you, or distributing such a recording to others. Whether the recording could actually be used as evidence in any related proceedings, and whether making it exposed you to any personal legal risk, really depends on the specific facts of how and where it was made, so this is a situation worth discussing directly and promptly with a lawyer rather than assuming either outcome.