Calm down. Nothing has changed in European law.
There are two aspects of European law that need to be kept in mind simultaneously but separately: privacy, and data protection.
Both are based on the European Convention on Human Rights. All EU member states are signatory to the Convention, and all have agreed to make their domestic law consistent with it. What counts as "consistent with the Convention" is determined by the European Court of Human Rights, and each EU member is bound by the EU treaties to adjust its domestic law to satisfy the rulings of the ECHR. Some have already done that (France, eg), and some will get around to it sooner or, more likely, later (Italy, eg, where existing privacy law, like a lot of Italian law, dates from Mussolini's time). Even if a country has not got around to fixing its law, its citizens can appeal to the ECHR, and the ECHR will over-ride the decisions of local courts enforcing the unreconstructed law. Nothing stops individual EU member states from going beyond the Convention, and the ECHR does not prescribe how, administratively, they have to satisfy the Convention, so there is variation in the administrative details. The document linked to by the OP is just Malta putting long-standing EU law into effect.
Article 8 of the Convention says that "Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence". The exact wording is important, because its use of "private life" instead of "privacy" is where the things that English-speakers find peculiar come from. Obviously, your private life is your private life wherever you happen to be. So the ECHR has said that people cannot photograph you in a way that adversely affects your private life, whether you are in public or not. Obviously, as far as the Convention is concerned, taking but not publishing a photograph does not affect your privacy, and photographs that do not impinge on your private life can be taken in public and published.
Because the issue is "respect for private life" French courts have decided that even consent may not allow a photographer to publish photographs after some time has passed. For example, a book of photographs of gang members in France had to be withdrawn because it included photographs of a man taken when he was a gang member but who was no longer associated with gangs. Conversely, a book of photographs of homeless people in Paris could include a photograph of an elegant woman sitting on a park bench because it said nothing about her private life.
Then there is data protection, which is related but not the same as privacy. You have a right to control the collection and use of personal data, and, obviously, a photograph of your face is personal data. So, EU law is that people cannot publish photographs of you - use your personal data - without your consent, and cannot take photographs of you - collect your personal data - if you object. (The statement by Airy that in France you will only get into trouble if someone files a complaint is correct, but misleading for English-speakers, because whereas English and therefore US law makes a sharp distinction between civil wrongs, that private people must sue for, and crimes, that the police intervene against and the state prosecutes, European law does not. The police in Paris cannot arrest you if they see you photographing people, but a person who objects to being photographed does not have to sue you: they can go to the nearest policeman and complain and then the policeman can arrest you).
US law is moving quite rapidly to the same destination as EU law, although by a different route: copyright and personal image rights. You will, relatively soon if things go on as they have been, have what amounts to copyright in your image, just as celebrities do now, so people will not be able to create "derivative works" - photographs of you - without your consent. There is no Constitutional impediment to that. Americans are fond of saying that "there is no expectation of privacy in a public place". This is not a correct statement of US law: there is an expectation of privacy in public places that are set up to offer some degree of privacy - a public toilet being the obvious example. A more fundamental point is that the statement that there is no expectation of privacy in a public place is based on court decisions about the 4th Amendment prohibition of unreasonable search and seizure. There is no Constitutional right to reasonable search and seizure, so nothing prevents the law saying there is an expectation of privacy in public. It is well-established that the 1st Amendment does not protect breaches of copyright.
