“DP-Day will merely mark the end of the beginning of a very long journey for the data protection community.”
May 25th 2018 is looming large in the eyes of many B2B marketers wishing to promote their wares in the EU. But as UK Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said in her speech to the IAAP recently, this is only the beginning.
And while the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is garnering all the headlines at the moment, B2B marketers must continue to pay attention to a whole raft of national data privacy laws, such as:
- Belgium – The Code of Economic Law, and the Royal Decree of 4 April 2003 regulating advertising by email
- Germany – The German Act Against Unfair Practices 2004 (UWG) and the revised German Telecommunications Act
- UK – The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 (PECR)
Over time, these will be largely replaced by the EU’s ePrivacy v.2 legislation, but in the meantime national legislation continues to apply.
Rhetorik, in collaboration with its European EMIG partners, have published a white paper covering these regulations in some detail, and what they mean for B2B marketers. If you would like a copy of the white paper, please request it via our Contact form.
Looking at Germany as an example of some of the complexities involved, the Thomson Reuters Practical Law site has this to say:
“In line with the E-Privacy Directive (Directive 2002/58/EC), email marketing and advertising generally require the customer’s prior express consent under the German Act against Unfair Trade Practices.”
In addition, the German Federal Court of Justice has expressly stated that assumed consent does not satisfy the requirements for email marketing.”
There are some instances where email marketing without express consent is allowed, but essentially what every German marketer knows is that specific opt-in consent is required for B2B email marketing.
