On February 16th 2020 the Assembly of the Republic of North Macedonia adopted the new Law on Personal Data Protection.

This law is adaptation to the jurisdiction to the European GDPR.

The Law on Personal Data Protection in North Macedonia has already raised many controversies, and one of the biggest ones is certainly which documents are required. For example, often you see companies who think having a privacy policy and a consent form on their website is enough; however, this is only a small part of the documents that are required to be fully compliant with this new privacy regulation.

For some, the  Law on Personal Data Protection in North Macedonia reflects a growing organizational commitment to transparency, accountability, and the protection of privacy. Others will need to make significant changes to the data control and processing models. If you fall under the jurisdiction of the Law, the time for compliance was August 24th, 2020.

The law governs the collection, use and disclosure of personal data of natural persons (data subjects) by businesses/companies (data controllers and data processors).  The data subjects can be employees, customers and suppliers of companies and the members of the general public.

Each business must comply with the law, otherwise the business itself and/or its directors and/or its managers can be liable to a civil liability (a compensation for actual damages suffered by the data subject from the offence committed by the business plus punitive damages up to two times of the actual damages) and/or an administrative liability (a fine not exceeding 4% of the company annual income).

If you want to know more about the data protection regulation in North Macedonia, click here.