Penalties for unwanted text messages and emails up to RSD 100,000 – New features of Law on Electronic Trade

The National Assembly of Serbia has adopted amendments to the Law on Electronic Trade, under which the sending of commercial text messages and emails is allowed only with previous consent of the consumer the message is intended for.

Serbian Minister of Labor, Employment, Veteran and Social Policy Zoran Djordjevic said during the discussion that the sending of unwanted messages electronically is considered “aggressive and unfair business practice”.

– The sending of commercial messages against the targeted person's consent is now penalized with a fixed amount of RSD 100,000 for legal entities or RSD 20,000 for entrepreneurs with these amendments – Djordjevic said.

According to him, the amendments to the law also mean that there is now an obligation of keeping the data (IP address) about the user of information society services for at least 30 days after the service is no longer provided.

– For example, the obligation pertains to the owners of various online platforms through which other traders advertise their products and is a very important mechanism for determining the responsibility for the content of the messages sent – he said.

He says that, in the upcoming period, the control of the subjects which operate electronically, will be more efficient, as inspection organs will be able to reach the true advertiser thanks to the obligation of keeping the IP address, and the supervision will also be more efficient thanks to the implementation of misdemeanor reports.

Djordjevic pointed out that the amendments to the law also enabled cross-border provision of services of information society. Thanks to this, once the country joins the EU, local providers registered in Serbia will be able to have the status of a legal entity in EU states under equal terms, as well as vice versa. He said that the amendments also introduced a mechanism for removing forbidden and illegal online content.

Djordjevic explained that the competent authorities had been enabled to adopt acts ordering website owners, for example, to remove forbidden content, including hate speech, within two working days. If they fail to do so, legal entities will be penalized with RSD 100,000 to RSD 1.5 million, whereas entrepreneurs will be penalized with RSD 10,000 to RSD 300,000.

Serbia to regulate commodities markets

The National Assembly of Serbia has also adopted the Law on Commodities Markets, which provides the basis for the development of commodities markets, with the key new feature being a greater security of trade, which will be enabled in several ways.

Minister Djordjevic previously said that the law would provide the commodities market with greater authorization, but also impose greater obligations, in the form of controls and the need to guarantee transactions.

He added that the main new feature is that all participants in the transactions in commodities market, the seller, the buyer and the commodities market would now need to lay down guarantees, which has not been an option so far.

– The commodities market lays down the guarantee through the capital contribution of RSD 50 million, and the buyer and the seller also lay down guarantees in the amount determined by the commodities market. The guarantees are laid down to the commodities market's account, which will be exempt from blocking and be activated only in case one party fails to meet its obligations to the other one – Djordjevic said.

Another important feature is the introduction of the Securities Commission as the regulator of the market operations and the transactions within it.

The commodities market, Djordjevic explains, will be open to local and foreign legal entities, as well as individual agricultural producers. According to him, the law will also enable a greater reliability of information about the prices of products at the commodities market. The maximum penalty for legal entities that violate the law is RSD 3 million, Djordjevic said.

Ministarstvo za rad, zapošljavanje, boračka i socijalna pitanja Republike Srbije

Narodna skupština Republike Srbije

Zoran Đorđević

Law on Electronic Trade

Law on Commodities Markets

commodities markets regulations