With effect from 1 January 2023, the last part of the amendment to Act No. 300/2008 Coll., on Electronic Acts and Authorised Conversion of Documents, will come into force. The purpose of this amendment is to promote the use of data boxes and thus help the digitalisation of public administration within the eGovernment project.

Data messages have the advantage that, unlike emails, they contain delivery receipts, so you can see exactly when the data message was delivered.

The aforementioned part of the amendment obligatorily establishes data boxes for all entrepreneurs and legal entities and some natural persons, who are not entrepreneurs.

Individuals

Data mailboxes will also newly be established for non-business individuals, who use the so-called qualified means of electronic identification, i.e. a bank identity, electronic ID card, NIA ID to log into the citizen’s identity.

However, natural persons have the option to request that the Ministry of the Interior make the data box inaccessible (to “block” it), if it is a data box of a natural person.

However, it is best to make the data box inaccessible as soon as possible, because the fiction of delivery is applied to messages delivered to your data box. Therefore, if you do not log in within 10 days of receiving a data message in your mailbox, the message is considered to have been delivered.

However, there is an option to set up notification to your email or telephone, when a data message is delivered.

The government seeks to abolish the obligation to set up data mailboxes for all individuals through an amendment proposal by Petr Letocha. The amendment intends to abolish this obligation before the amendment comes into force, i.e. by 1 January 2023. At the moment, however, it is still uncertain if the law will make it through the legislative process by that date. It is therefore possible that the obligation to set up data boxes for natural persons will not be abolished in time. The law still needs to be approved by the Senate and signed by the President.

Legal entities and entrepreneurs

A data mailbox is newly obligatory for all natural persons engaged in business, and a data mailbox is also established for all legal entities, which are registered in a statutory register, i.e. not only those registered in the Company Register.

Public authorities communicate via data boxes (if the person has a data box). By not using the data box, an entrepreneur thus exposes himself to the risk of sanctions for non-cooperation with public authorities. Some filing, such as tax return, must also be sent via a data box.

Author: Veronika Odrobinová, Petr Berdych