Is cold email legal in Slovakia? B2B rules 2026

Partly: you may email the published contact details of companies and sole traders without prior consent, if each message identifies you and offers an easy, free opt-out; every other recipient needs provable prior consent. The exception is section 116(15) of Act No. 452/2021 Coll. on electronic communications. The regulator, RÚ (the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Communications and Postal Services), reads the rule the same way. The risk is a second law: the Advertising Act still bans email advertising without the recipient's prior consent, and in a 2014 case, upheld by a court in 2017, the Slovak Trade Inspection fined a company-to-company cold email under it. We found no guidance on LinkedIn messages.

Checked on 2 November 2026 against the law texts and the regulators' guidance and decisions. This is not legal advice.

Slovakia sits with Estonia on the opt-out side for company addresses, while the Czech Republic, Poland and Austria require consent first. All countries: cold email laws by country.

Slovakia at a glance

What the law says

Section 116(3) of the electronic communications act sets the general rule: email, SMS, MMS, fax and automatic calling systems may be used for direct marketing only with "predchádzajúcim preukázateľným súhlasom" (prior provable consent) obtained before the first contact. The 18 August 2026 version is current; the 1 January 2027 version leaves § 116 unchanged.

The ePrivacy Directive requires consent only for "subscribers who are natural persons" (article 13(5)). Slovakia uses that room in § 116(15), in force since 1 February 2022:

"alebo ak ide o priamy marketing adresovaný na zverejnené kontaktné údaje účastníka alebo užívateľa, ktorý je fyzickou osobou podnikateľom alebo právnickou osobou."

Our translation: "or if it is direct marketing addressed to the published contact details of a subscriber or user who is a sole trader or a legal person." The same paragraph requires a way to refuse "jednoducho a bezplatne" (easily and free of charge) in every message and bans email that hides the sender or an address for stop requests. Consent must meet the GDPR standard, and its record must be kept four years after withdrawal (§ 116(5) and (6)).

A second law points the other way. Section 3(3) of the Advertising Act: "Reklama sa nesmie šíriť automatickým telefonickým volacím systémom, telefaxom a elektronickou poštou bez predchádzajúceho súhlasu ich užívateľa, ktorý je príjemcom reklamy." (Advertising may not be spread by automatic calling system, fax or electronic mail without the prior consent of the user who receives it; our translation.) It has no company exception and is unchanged since at least 2014. The e-commerce act adds in § 4(6): no commercial email unless the recipient requested it in advance.

What the regulator says

RÚ's public guidance says marketing email generally needs prior provable consent, but where a company or sole trader has published its contact details "na svojej webovej stránke alebo iným spôsobom" (on its website or in another way), the sender "môže na takto zverejnené kontaktné údaje poslať e-mail" (may send an email to those published details), if the recipient can refuse in every message (our translations).

The page does not say whether register data or bought lists count. In a January 2025 decision on marketing calls to companies, RÚ treated a number in a company's annual accounts on the FinStat website as published under the same wording in § 116(12), and said contacts "z verejne dostupných zdrojov" (from publicly available sources) qualify. Our reading: company addresses in public company data likely count too; a bought list is only as good as the public source behind each address.

Named employees, sole traders and the first email

Sole traders are named in § 116(15) and by RÚ, so their published contact details are open to opt-out email. For named employees we found no guidance: the law speaks of the published contact details of the legal person. Our reading: an address the company itself shows as its contact is covered; an employee's address from a data vendor or a personal profile is not clearly published by the company, so ask for consent or use generic addresses.

Asking for consent by email is banned too: § 116(4) covers calls, email, SMS and the other listed channels used "na účely získania predchádzajúceho súhlasu" (to obtain prior consent). Our reading: this matters only where § 116(15) does not already let you send your offer.

LinkedIn and social media messages

We found no RÚ, SOI or court guidance on LinkedIn. The act defines electronic mail as any text, voice, sound or image message sent over a public network and stored until the recipient collects it (§ 116(1)). Our reading: a LinkedIn message fits, so the email rule applies; whether a profile counts as "published contact details" is untested.

GDPR and ÚOOÚ SR

The telecom act decides whether you may send; GDPR governs the data. The Office for Personal Data Protection (ÚOOÚ SR) says a company address that points to a person, such as "Anna.Nova@firma.sk", is personal data (guidance). Say where you got the data within one month and "at the latest at the time of the first communication" (Article 14(3)); after an objection, stop (Article 21(3), GDPR). ÚOOÚ SR can fine up to EUR 20,000,000 or 4% of worldwide turnover, if higher (Act 18/2018 § 104(2)); we found no ÚOOÚ SR decision on B2B cold email. More in GDPR and B2B email under legitimate interest.

Fines and real cases

The telecom act fines a company or sole trader EUR 200 to 5% of the previous accounting period's turnover for breaching § 116 (§ 124(3)), or up to EUR 300,000 if turnover cannot be calculated (§ 124(6)). The Advertising Act fines email advertising without consent EUR 300 to 4% of turnover, at most EUR 100,000 (§ 11(3)(c)), or EUR 150,000 for a repeat within 12 months (§ 11(4)(c)).

Verified decisions:

• RÚ, 20 December 2024 (no. 8239/OŠD/2024-32012): EUR 50,000. A company emailed a newsletter to 16,842 recipients in one month under the own-customer exception, with no opt-out in the messages; RÚ held that refusing by call centre or by email is not "simple" (decision). Not a cold B2B case; we found no ruling on an appeal.
• RÚ, 11 March 2024: EUR 5,000 for three promotional SMS in 2022 to an individual without provable consent (decision, listed under 11 April 2024).
• SOI, upheld by the Regional Court in Trenčín on 1 June 2017 (11 S/47/2015): EUR 300. A company emailed an offer for an online service to another company in June 2014 without consent; SOI fined it under the Advertising Act, and the court rejected the argument that the telecom act applied instead (judgment).

That case fell under the previous telecom act (Act 351/2011), whose consent rule covered only natural persons (§ 62(4)); the court applied the Advertising Act anyway. SOI's undated FAQ still calls unsolicited advertising banned and under SOI's supervision, but sends complaints about senders based elsewhere in the EU to RÚ. We found no decision since 2022 on how the two laws fit together. Our reading: RÚ backs opt-out in writing, but a recipient company can still complain to SOI, a risk that weighs most on senders based in Slovakia, so opt-out is not risk-free.

Checklist for B2B email to Slovakia

1. Use only contact details the company published, and record where and when you found each.
2. Prefer generic addresses; a named employee's address needs consent unless the company shows it as its contact (our reading).
3. Put a free one-click unsubscribe in every message; a call centre or an email to you is not enough (RÚ).
4. Get provable consent from everyone else first, and keep it for four years after withdrawal.
5. Existing customers: your own similar products only, up to one year after the contract ends.
6. Honour objections at once and keep a suppression list.
7. Name the sender, and take Slovak legal advice on the Advertising Act if you send at volume.

How Leo handles Slovakia

Leo, the buying-signal agent Revexa builds, applies its own automatic rule only to Germany, where nothing is sent without your approval, not even in autonomous mode. Slovakia has no such rule. Slovak law lets you email published company contacts without consent but requires it for others, and in review mode, the default, you read and approve every draft, so whether a Slovak lead is a published company contact is yours to check. Keep review mode on if your list has named employees. Leo writes to each lead in the lead's own language when your website exists in that language, and in English otherwise. Leo is the wrong choice if you need software that decides for you whether a Slovak address is lawful to email.

More countries: Czech Republic, Hungary, Estonia, Poland, Bulgaria, Croatia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Latvia, Cyprus, Malta and Iceland.

Common questions

Is B2B cold email legal in Slovakia?

Partly. Section 116(15) of Act No. 452/2021 Coll. allows email to the published contact details of companies and sole traders without prior consent, with an easy, free opt-out in every message. Other recipients need provable prior consent, and the Advertising Act has a consent rule with no company exception.

Can I email a Slovak company's info@ address without consent?

If the company published it, RÚ says yes, with an easy opt-out in every message, though the Advertising Act's consent rule remains a risk. For an address you cannot trace to a public source, our reading: ask for consent first.

Can I send a first email asking for consent in Slovakia?

No: § 116(4) bans using email to obtain consent. Published company contacts can get your offer directly under § 116(15); for anyone else, get consent another way.

Are LinkedIn messages covered in Slovakia?

We found no guidance naming LinkedIn. The act defines electronic mail broadly, so in our reading a sales DM follows the email rule.

What are the fines for cold email in Slovakia?

Up to 5% of turnover under the telecom act and EUR 100,000 for a first breach of the Advertising Act. RÚ fined a newsletter sender EUR 50,000 in December 2024 for giving no easy opt-out in its emails.