New CNPD Guidelines On Direct Marketing Electronic Communications

This year's first guidelines from the Portuguese Data Protection Supervisory Authority ("CNPD") are on direct marketing electronic communications (Guidelines/2022/1).

They address a topic that is still under revision, mainly, in the framework of the (future) EU ePrivacy Regulation, which since 2017 has been subject to successive delays due to lack of consensus among Member States within the Council of the European Union.

These Guidelines were essentially motivated by the increasing number of reports addressed to the Supervisory Authority, regarding unsolicited electronic communications, having the CNPD registered more than two thousand reports in 2021.

However, difficulties arise not only for data subjects, but also for companies who face several challenges when planning their electronic communications for direct marketing purposes. Within the questions that arise, the most relevant and frequent are those related to the possibility of sending electronic