The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection Mr. Rodoljub Sabic believes that the Law on Consumer Protection, which came into force on the 1st of January of this year, besides the new conditions and measures specific to consumer protection, also introduced important instruments of privacy and personal data protection into our legal system by explicitly defining “unsolicited and invasive business practices”.
The Commissioner invited all legal persons and entrepreneurs to respect the privacy of the citizens, and to bear in mind that, for “unsolicited and invasive business practices”, the Law introduces relatively harsh monetary penalties, while he also invited the citizens to utilize their rights, and, in cases of infringement, seek protection and hold the violators accountable for their violations.
In this regard, the Commissioner also stated the following:
“Article 25 of the Law on Consumer Protection explicitly states that the business activities that are, regardless of the specific circumstances, considered “unsolicited and invasive business practices” are visiting the consumer at his/her place of residence without his/her prior consent, as well as multiple attempts to communicate with the consumer over the telephone, facsimile, e-mail, or using some other distance communication device against the consumer’s wishes.
The aforementioned circumstances are only allowed if executed as part of the existing signed contract.
For the above-mentioned forms of “unsolicited and invasive business practices”, serious monetary penalties are also envisaged – for a legal person, between 300.000 and two million Serbian dinars, while, for entrepreneurs, between 50.000 and 500.000 Serbian dinars. Besides the aforementioned, for these types of wrongdoings, a natural person, or an authorized individual working within the legal entity, can also be penalized with a penalty between 50.000 and 150.000 Serbian dinars.
The appropriate implementation of these legal provisions could significantly contribute to the suppression of the chaotic, for the citizens often very disturbing and upsetting practice noticed among many of the business entities and entrepreneurs, thus ensuring a certain level of privacy protection, as well as personal data protection, which will now be better harmonized with the EU standards and the standards of the contemporary democratic order in general.”
