Law 4994/2022, accessibility requirements for services: scope, provider duties, microenterprise exemption, fundamental alteration and disproportionate burden, presumption of conformity, transitional rules, the ban on discriminatory pricing and the sanctioning authorities

Article 3(2) applies the Act to electronic communications services other than transmission services used for machine-to-machine services, to services providing access to audiovisual media services, to elements of air, bus, rail and waterborne passenger transport services, to consumer banking services, to e-books and the hardware intended specifically for them, and to e-commerce services.

Article 4(41) defines e-books and dedicated software as the service of providing digital files that convey an electronic version of a book, which can be accessed, navigated, read and used, and the software, including mobile services and applications, dedicated to accessing, navigating, reading and using those files.

The elements of passenger transport services that Article 3(2)(γ) covers are websites, services for mobile devices including mobile applications, electronic tickets and electronic ticketing services, the transmission of information on transport services including real-time travel information (for information screens, only interactive screens located in Greek territory), and interactive self-service terminals located in the European Union.

For urban, suburban and regional transport services, Article 3(2)(γ) applies only sub-item (γε), which covers interactive self-service terminals located in the European Union other than those installed as integral parts of vehicles, aircraft, ships or rolling stock. Article 22(3) applies Chapter H of Law 4727/2020 to services provided through the websites and mobile applications of public sector bodies.

Article 3(4) leaves out of websites and mobile applications pre-recorded time-based media and office file formats published up to 28 June 2025, online maps and mapping services that provide the necessary information in an accessible digital way for navigation, third-party content that the operator neither funds, develops nor controls, and archived content that is not updated or published after 28 June 2025.

Article 5(2) requires all services to meet the accessibility requirements of Sections III and IV of Annex I, except that urban, suburban and regional transport services are excepted as to Section III. Article 5(4) exempts microenterprises that provide services from the accessibility requirements of Article 5(2) and from any obligation relating to compliance with them.

Article 5(3) requires the built environment that the clients of the covered services use to comply with accessibility requirements under the urban planning legislation and the legislation on accessibility in the land zone of ports. Article 26(6) applies the sanctions of the urban planning legislation and of the legislation on accessibility in the land zone of ports to a breach of the built environment obligations of Article 5(3).

Article 6 deems services that comply with the requirements on accessible information and information on accessibility laid down in Regulations (EC) 261/2004, (EC) 1107/2006, (EC) 1371/2007, (EU) 1177/2010 and (EU) 181/2011, and in the related acts issued under Presidential Decree 104/2010, to meet the corresponding requirements of the Act. Where the Act provides additional requirements beyond those of those Regulations and acts, Article 6 applies the additional requirements in full.

Article 13(1) requires service providers to design and provide services in accordance with the accessibility requirements. Article 13(2)(a) requires providers to draw up the information that Annex V requires, to state how the services meet the applicable requirements, to make it available to the public in written and oral form, including in a manner accessible to persons with disabilities, and to keep it for as long as the service is in operation.

Article 13(3) requires providers, subject to Article 28, to ensure that procedures are in place so that the provision of services conforms to the applicable requirements, and to take due account of changes in the service, in the requirements and in the harmonised standards or technical specifications on which conformity is declared.

Article 13(4) requires a provider of a non-conforming service to take the corrective measures needed and to inform the competent market surveillance authority at once, with details of the non-conformity and the measures taken. Article 13(5) requires providers to give the competent authority, on a reasoned request, all the information needed to show that the service conforms, and to cooperate with it.

Article 14(1) applies the accessibility requirements of Article 5 to the extent that compliance does not require a significant change resulting in a fundamental alteration of the basic nature of the products or services and does not impose a disproportionate burden on the economic operators concerned. Article 14(2) requires economic operators to make a documented assessment of whether compliance requires a significant change or, on the criteria of Annex VI, imposes a disproportionate burden.

Article 14(3) requires operators to keep all the results for five years from the last placing of a product on the market or the last provision of a service, and to give the authority a copy of the assessment on request.

Article 14(5) requires service providers that invoke point (b) of Article 14(1) to renew, for at least five years and for each category or type of service, their assessment of whether the burden is disproportionate, when the service offered changes or when the authorities that supervise the compliance of services request it. Article 14(5)(c) of Directive (EU) 2019/882 also requires service providers to renew the assessment in any event at least every five years.

Article 14(6) bars an economic operator of the public or the private sector that receives funding from sources other than its own resources, provided for the purpose of improving accessibility, from invoking point (b) of Article 14(1). Article 14(7) requires an operator that invokes Article 14(1) for a particular product or service to inform the market surveillance authority or the service responsible for checking the compliance of services.

Article 15(1) presumes that products and services that comply with harmonised standards, or parts of them, whose references are published in the Official Journal of the European Union meet the accessibility requirements to the extent that the standards cover them. Article 15(2) presumes that products and services that comply with technical specifications, or parts of them, meet the accessibility requirements to the extent that the specifications cover them.

Article 28(1) lets service providers, until 28 June 2030, keep providing their services with products that they lawfully used to provide similar services before that date. Article 28(1) lets service contracts concluded before 28 June 2025 stay in force without alteration until they expire, for no more than five years from that date.

Article 28(3) lets self-service terminals that service providers lawfully used before 28 June 2025 stay in use for similar services until the end of their economically useful life, for at most twenty years from the start of their use.

Article 24 bars an unfavourable discriminatory pricing policy, and any selective financial burden of any kind, against consumers whose access improves or is maximised as a result of the compliance of undertakings and of banking and financial institutions with the Act. Article 26(4) makes the EETT the competent authority to impose sanctions in the context of electronic communications services, as Article 138 of Law 4727/2020 defines them.

Article 138(3) of Law 4727/2020 lets the EETT impose a fine of up to EUR 3,000,000. Article 26(5) provides that, for a breach of the Act's obligations by media service providers, the National Council for Radio and Television (ESR) imposes on the provider the sanctions of Article 36(3) of Law 4779/2021 or of Article 4 of Law 2328/1995.

The sanctions of Article 36(3) of Law 4779/2021 are a recommendation to comply, a fine from EUR 1,000 to EUR 500,000, temporary suspension of operation for one day to three months, and permanent suspension of operation. Article 3(5) applies the Act without prejudice to Law 4672/2020 on permitted uses of protected works for the benefit of blind, visually impaired and print-disabled persons and to Regulation (EU) 2017/1563.

Article 25(2) presumes that a product or service whose characteristics, elements or functions comply with the accessibility requirements of Annex I, in accordance with Section VI of that Annex, meets the accessibility obligations of other Union acts, other than this Act, for those characteristics, elements or functions, unless those acts provide otherwise. Article 13 of Law 4994/2022 transposes Article 13 of Directive (EU) 2019/882.