Czech Republic: Chamber of Deputies approves amendment to the electronic communications law, opt-in consent for cookies and telemarketing.
The Czech Telecommunication Office (‘CTU’) announced, on 15 September 2021, that the Chamber of Deputies had overruled the Senate and approved the transposition amendment to the Act No. 127/2005 Coll., on electronic communications and on Amendment of Certain Related Acts (‘the Electronic Communications Act’) as amended, in its original version by a majority of 137 votes. In particular, the CTU highlights that the amendment will now be signed by the President of the Czech Republic and will implement the European Electronic Communications Code into Czech law.
OneTrust DataGuidance confirmed, on 21 September 2021, with Jakub Kabát, Associate at CMS Prague, that according to the upcoming changes to the Czech Electronic Communications Act which have been recently approved by Czech Parliament, telemarketing will only be possible with the explicit opt-in consent of the telemarketing targets. In addition, Mr Kabát noted that, “A similar situation will be with cookies where website users will have to give an active opt-in consent for processing their data. Until now, it was sufficient to use an opt-out mechanism for both telemarketing and cookies.” Lastly, as highlighted by Mr Kabát, the relevant provisions of the Electronic Communications Act are Section 89, paragraph 3 for cookies and Section 96 for telemarketing.
You can track the progress of the amendment here and download the approved text here, both only available in Czech.