Data Protection in the Slovak Republic

Electronic marketing in the Slovak Republic

With effect as of 1 February 2022, the electronic marketing is regulated by the Act No. 452/2021 Coll. on Electronic Communications, as amended (the “Act”). With the effectiveness of the Act, the former regulation, i.e. Act No. 351/2011 Coll. on Electronic Communications, as amended, has been repealed.

The Act transposed Directive (EU) 2018/1972 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 December 2018 establishing a European Electronic Communications Code into the Slovak law.

The Act introduced new requirements for obtaining consent and conditions for conducting direct marketing including its definition.

According to the Act, the direct marketing means any form of presentation of goods or services in written or oral form, sent or presented through a publicly available service directly to one or more subscribers or users.

The Act stipulates that the use of automatic call and communication systems without human intervention, fax, e-mail and SMS and MMS message service is permitted towards the subscriber or user only with his / her prior demonstrable consent obtained before contacting the subscriber or user. For the purposes of obtaining prior consent, the use of automatic calling and communication systems without human intervention, fax, electronic mail and short message service is prohibited.

Consent that meets the requirements of Article 4 (11) GDPR is considered to be demonstrable consent for the purposes of direct marketing. The person to whom such consent was granted is obliged to keep a durable medium on which the demonstrable consent of the subscriber or user is recorded for a period of at least four years from the withdrawal of the consent by the subscriber or user. When obtaining the consent of the subscriber or user, the person carrying out direct marketing is obliged to indicate the way in which the consent can be easily revoked.

The subscriber or user can at any time withdraw the previous consent or object to the call for the purpose of direct marketing or obtaining consent. The person to whom such consent has been revoked or to whom the call has been objected is obliged to demonstrably confirm to the subscriber or user the revocation of such consent or the acceptance of the objection to the call no later than 30 days after the date of revocation of consent or the receipt of the objection to the call and to keep the confirmation of the revocation of the consent or the acceptance of the objection to the call on a durable medium for a period of at least four years from the withdrawal of consent or call objections.

The Act introduced also the list of the phone numbers, which will be held by the Office for Electronic Communications and Postal Services and which will include the phone numbers stipulated by subscribers or users for the purpose of expressing disagreement with the call for direct marketing purposes and for verifying the listing of a telephone number or group of telephone numbers by the person carrying out direct marketing in the list of telephone numbers (the “list”).

For the purposes of direct marketing, any call is prohibited if the subscriber or user has:

  • provided a phone number in the list; or
  • objected to such calls to the person for whose benefit direct marketing is carried out (this does not apply if the subscriber or user revoked the objection to calls for the purposes of direct marketing to the person for whose benefit direct marketing is carried out or granted his / her consent in the time after the last update of the phone number in the list).

The prior consent of the recipient of electronic mail, SMS and MMS message service is not required if it is a direct marketing of a person's own similar goods and services, and if his / her contact details for the delivery of electronic mail, SMS and MMS message service were obtained by the same person in connection with the sale of goods or services, or if it is direct marketing addressed to the published contact details of subscriber or user who is a natural person - entrepreneur or legal entity. The recipient of electronic mail, SMS and MMS message service must be given the opportunity to simply and free of charge at any time to refuse such use of the contact data at the time of their acquisition and with each delivered message if he / she has not previously refused such use. It is forbidden:

  1. to send electronic mail from which the identity and address of the sender is unknown, to which the recipient can send a request to stop sending such messages; and
  2. to encourage visitors to visit a website in violation with a special regulation.

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