One of the most significant limitations of the national economic capacity is labour shortages, namely the lack of professionals, skilled and experienced workforce. In order to recruit the best qualified candidates, companies shall develop ways to become attracting.

Of the five types of corporation that may be established under Romanian law, joint stock and limited liability companies continue to be the most common. Recent statistics show that almost 1 million companies are active in Romania, of which approximately 800,000 are limited liability or joint stock companies. Further, the number of limited liability companies is reportedly double that of joint stock companies.

Neighbours and communities don't like it, but apartment owners love it, because they can multiply their income. Short-term rental to tourists or businesspeople who stay for just a few weeks is very controversial. Both courts as well as the legislative bodies of the Austrian provinces have found ways to restrict it.

We aim to analyze herein the implications of a long-term activity performed by a data protection officer (DPO) answering to questions including: Can the data protection officer, whether employed or outsourced, be sanctioned when it is established that the company is in breach of data processing rules? If yes - when, by what means and to what extent?

This overview aims to highlight selected potential Polish law issues related to liability for damages caused by machine learning algorithms (MLA) which an entrepreneur operating, buying or selling a business based on MLA may face and should consider. Needless to say, the civil law liability touched upon here is not the only liability regime which should be borne in mind. For the sake of clarity, however, matters related to specific sector regulation (e.g. for medical devices), intellectual property rights, GDPR as well as criminal liability are not addressed below, although they are equally important for MLA-based business.

While CNIL’s recent decision to fine Google is still subject to legal challenge from Google, it is relevant to look into CNIL’s position in this matter, from the perspective of its potential impact on the future positions of other data protection authorities in similar matters and the risks associated with GDPR. The article below relies on publicly available sources and does not aim to draw any conclusions on the merits of the case or make any assessment of the respective factual situation of the matters to which CNIL’s decision refers to, but rather to look into CNIL’s reasoning and outline key aspects for consideration going forward by the market players.

In the last two years, tax changes have been more frenetic and more exotic than ever. We could say that we are in the face of a perpetual tax revolution, or rather, we are in the face of a tax revolution on an ongoing basis.

A. Introduction: On November 1, 2018, Personal Data Protection Board (“Board”), acting under the Personal Data Protection Authority, published its principle decision with number 2018/119 in the Official Gazette, which then corrected on November 7, 2018 (“Decision”). Board’s Decision is regarding prevention of promotional notifications, e-mail messages, text messages and calls that data subjects might receive from data controllers and data processors.

In Hungary, as is the case in other EU countries, recent economic growth has been accompanied by a labour shortage. This is largely due to Hungarian workers emigrating to other EU countries in search of higher wages and better living standards. According to statistics, approximately 5% of the country's working-age population has emigrated to other EU countries in recent years.

On 1 December 2018 the new Insurance Distribution Act (the "Act") became effective in the Czech Republic. It replaces the still effective Act No. 38/2004 Coll., on Insurance Intermediaries and Loss Adjusters, as amended ("IILA"), and implements the plan envisaged by the European Parliament and the Council (EU) Directive 2016/97 on insurance distribution (revised version) ("IDD"), even if a little later than anticipated.

Under the GDPR, every data controller that processes personal data through a data processor must conclude a GDPR-compliant data processing agreement with the processor. Parties may seek to negotiate the allocation of liability and shift it towards the other party. When doing this in Romania, we look at the interplay with the rules of the main forms of liability set out in the law.

The NPL market in Serbia traditionally knows of only two concerns, embodied in the numbers 48 and 204. Although you would assume that numerology had something to do with this assertion, the backstory is actually a lot more appealing.

The Slovak Republic’s favorable environment for investors and entrepreneurship has sometimes been obscured by law enforcement issues. The country’s Act No. 307/2016 Coll. on Electronic Debt Collection (the “Act”), which became effective in the Slovak legal system on February 1, 2017, was designed to improve law enforcement, speed up debt collection for creditors, and optimize expenses related to the procedure. The Act provided for simplified court proceedings held by electronic means with less administration and a reduced burden of proof, leading to an electronic payment order issuance, providing a quicker alternative to standard payment order judicial proceedings.

On July 30, 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law two bills approved by the Russian Parliament aimed at improving commercial, civil, administrative and criminal proceedings in Russia (the “Bills”).

In this age of intricate transnational ties, the international business community is placing an ever-increasing emphasis on the swift and economic settlement of disputes. Major arbitral institutions are adopting rules on expedited proceedings, promoting mediation, and/or embracing summary disposition procedures. All these initiatives are focused on managing the process and the taking of evidence: the focal points of procedural efficiency.

The The rules on collective redress were first introduced in Croatia’s legal system by two special acts – the 2003 Consumer Protection Act and the 2009 Act on Prevention of Discrimination. It was only later, in 2011, that the Civil Procedure Act provided the general legal framework for collective redress actions, named “actions for the protection of collective interests and rights.”

Ukraine has taken several important steps in recent months towards improving the country’s domestic dispute resolution mechanisms. One of those steps was the complete overhaul of the judicial system and the adoption of completely new procedural rules governing domestic litigation.

In early 2017 the Hungarian Parliament passed the Code of Administrative Litigation as a beginning of the reform of the central administration. As the final step, the Hungarian Parliament adopted a law on the Administrative Courts on 12 December 2018. The goal of the new legislation was to ’restore the prestige of the administrative courts’ which was abolished in 1949. Since then no separate administrative court system existed, it was integrated into the civil courts.

The legal environment in Poland has changed substantially over the last three years as a result of changes instituted by the conservative Law and Justice government. How can investors navigate their way through increasing regulatory pressures?

Recent practice in the Romanian dispute resolution landscape has shown a rise in (i) litigation involving wrongful decisions concerning unpaid tax, lack of liquidities, and consequent lack of debt settlement, and (ii) cases of fraudulent acts linked to insolvent companies, mostly committed prior to the commencement of the insolvency proceedings.

Bulgaria, along with the entire CEE region, has been experiencing a surge in investment and transactions over the past two to three years. Prior to that, hit by a late wave of the global recession, Bulgarian business faced problems with over-indebtedness, resulting in a large number of insolvencies, especially in the real estate sector. Since then, however, insolvencies have been decreasing. Thus, the recent uptick in the number of insolvency procedures being initiated in a particular sector – energy – deserves special focus and attention.

The new Hungarian Code of Civil Procedure (the “Code”) came with a number of ambitious promises, many of which have already been addressed in CEE Legal Matters. However, a prominent promise, namely increasing the transparency and predictability of litigation, has not yet been discussed in these pages.

In an attempt to lighten the heavy burden on the Greek judicial system, articles 178 to 206 of Law 4512/2018 on Arrangements for the Implementation of the Structural Reforms of the Economic Adjustment Programs and Other Provisions provide guidelines for new mediation procedures in civil and commercial matters. This alternative extrajudicial dispute resolution method seeks to provide an attractive and expeditious solution in the form of an executed agreement that is immediately enforceable.

While globalization and digitalization have increased the risk of violations that affect thousands of consumers, several EU member states — including Austria — do not yet offer class action lawsuits. The EU Commission has therefore proposed a draft directive to allow representative actions for the protection of collective interests of consumers as part of its “New Deal for Consumers.”