Adria legal group - Law office

The Law on Consumer Protection ("Official Gazette of the RS", no. 88/2021) (hereinafter: the “Law”) was published on 11 September 2021, entered into force on 19 September 2021 and will be applied as of 19 December 2021, apart from provisions regarding extra-judicial dispute resolution procedure which shall be applied as of 19 March 2022.

The Law was adopted for the purpose of removal of insufficiencies detected in the application of previous Law on Consumer Protection ("Official Gazette of the RS", no. 62/2014, 6/2016- other law and 44/2018 – other law), increase of legal protection of travelers as per their agreements on organizing travel, as well as for the purpose of harmonizing Serbia’s consumer law with the parallel law of the EU.

Some of the novelties introduced through are:

• advertising via telephone, fax or e-mail without the consumer’s prior consent is prohibited, meaning that the consumer has the right to contact his/her telephone operator demanding to be inscribed in the registry of consumers who do not wish to receive calls and messages regarding promotions or telephone sale.
• for the provision of services whose value exceeds 5,000 dinars, the service provider is obliged to make a service price estimate as well as to obtain the consumer’s written consent to said estimate prior to providing the services;
• the issue of product claims is regulated in more detail by introducing a three-day deadline for the consumer to respond to the answer to the submitted claim (whereas, in case of breach of the deadline, it shall be deemed that the consumer opposes the seller’s proposition for resolution of the claim), as well as by introducing the obligation of the seller to, in case of refusing a consumer’s claim, inform the consumer of the possibility of extra-judicial dispute resolution and of the competent bodies for such resolution;
• the consumer can initiate a judicial or extra-judicial dispute resolution procedure only after receiving the answer to a filed complaint or objection, whereas it will be mandatory for each store to publish a notification under which the trader is obliged by the Law to participate in an extra-judicial dispute resolution procedure;
• the extra-judicial dispute resolution procedure is regulated in detail. Firstly, it is now possible to conduct the procedure even for those disputes whose value exceeds 500,000 dinars. The procedure is initiated by submitting the appropriate application to the Ministry of Trade, Commerce and Telecommunications which then forwards the application to the bodies competent for the extra-judicial dispute resolution procedure. It is important to emphasize that the consumer’s participation in said procedure does not exclude the consumer’s right to demand damage compensation in a judicial procedure and that the obsolescence and preclusion deadlines do not run during the course of an extra-judicial dispute resolution procedure, being that the said deadlines start to run following expiry of the 15^th day from the day said procedure was terminated;
• regarding agreements on organizing travel, many novelties were introduced which, inter alia, refer to: mandatory elements of such agreement, extension of obligations and liabilities of the travel organizer, possibility of increase/reduction of the agreed price prior to commencement of travel, termination of the agreement by the traveler and reimbursement of made payments etc.;
• issuing of misdemeanor warrants is prescribed in case a trader violates the rules stipulated by the Law regarding the prohibition on advertising, publishing the notification on mandatory participation in an extra-judicial dispute resolution procedure and participation in the said procedure.

Disclaimer: The text above is provided for general guidance and does not represent legal advice. Copyright Adria Legal Group 2022.