Slovakia

[SK] Amendments to Statute on Media Services enter into force

IRIS 2025-7:1/11

Andrei Richter

Comenius University (Bratislava)

Amendments to the 2022 Statute of Slovakia “On Media Services and on Adoption of Amendments to Certain Statutes” (the Statute on Media Services, see IRIS 2023-2:1/10) were adopted by the National Council (Parliament) of the Slovak Republic on 27 June 2024, and partially entered into force on 28 June 2025. Their purpose is to align national legislation with the Digital Services Act (Regulation (EU) 2022/2065).

The amendments expand the mandate of the Council for Media Services (RpMS), the current national regulation authority (NRA) in Slovakia, beyond audiovisual media to include intermediary services, online platforms, and internet search engines. As of 28 June 2025, the mandate of RpMS is to provide state regulation in the field of broadcasting, retransmission, provision of on-demand audiovisual media services, provision of content sharing platforms, provision of information society services which are intermediary services ("intermediary services"), provision of online intermediary services, and provision of online search engine services – to the extent defined by the Statute on Media Services (para 108). Supervision of compliance with the legal regulations governing these fields is also now part of the mandate (para 109).

The amendments provide that the RpMS becomes the competent authority designated as Digital Services Coordinator (DSC) in the sense of the EU Digital Services Act (DSA). According to the amendments to the Statute on Media Services (para 110), that includes an obligation to participate in the work of the European Digital Services Board, and make decisions:

- to certify the body where the out-of-court dispute resolutions shall take place, and to revoke this certification (in the sense of Art. 21 of the DSA);

- to award, suspend and cancel the status of a “trusted flagger” (in the sense of Art. 22 of the DSA);

- to award the status of “vetted researcher” and to terminate the access of a “vetted researcher” to data (in the sense of Art. 40 of the DSA).

New articles of the Statute on Media Services (133a-133g) detail certain procedures and activities of the Slovak national regulation authority to enable its new functions, including effectiveness of the supervision in the field (inspection rights, cooperation with the governmental institutions, interim measures, compliance, etc.). New Article 145b establishes the amounts of fines that shall be imposed on providers of intermediatory services, providers of online intermediary services and providers of online search engine services in case of the violations of the Statute: they may reach 6 percent of the provider’s global annual turnover.