The Life Sciences & Healthcare industry is not free of criminal activity that may give rise to the companies’ liability for criminal offences. However, the corporate criminal liability in Poland is not effectively enforced now. The government presented its proposal to change that in the new draft law amending the Corporate Criminal Liability Act (the “draft”).

Turkish Commercial Code No. 6102 [“TCC”] stipulates that the carrier shall be liable for the damages caused by the loss, damage or delay of delivery of commodity within the period from the takeover of commodity for carriage to delivery of it. The legal nature of the carrier's liability in this context is strict liability. This means that even if the carrier has no fault in incurrence of damages, they should still be liable. However, this liability is not absolute. As a matter of fact, the carrier can be released from liability on the grounds set out in the law or by proving that they have taken the greatest care.

Kochanski & Partners, the authors of the first metaverse report in Poland, published a follow-up tax themed report on 27 October. “Taxation of Cryptocurrencies and NFTs, and Challenges in the Metaverse” is a comprehensive overview of the tax consequences of events and transactions involving cryptocurrencies and NFTs. The publication was coupled with presentation of the report and an expert debate featuring the participation of representatives of business, new technology market practitioners who deal on a daily basis with crypto, NFTs and the Metaverse, and lawyers specialising in digital economics and taxes.

The main obligation of the transport and logistics companies, i.e., carrier in contracts of carriage is to take the commodity from one place to another and deliver it to the consignee. The carrier is obliged to deliver the commodity in the form and condition in which it was received. Therefore, the carrier also undertakes the obligation to preserve the commodity under its control while performing the contract of carriage.

Harmonized rules ensuring smooth functioning of the EU Digital Internal Market finally have finally come into existence. Instead of 27 different legal requirements there will be only one set of rules regulating digital market and services in the EU –namely, the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act.

A hot topic in today's Romanian tax world is the activity of online “opinion makers”, i.e. influencers, bloggers and vloggers, and not only, related to the well-known online and social media platforms, according to an investigation carried out by the Romanian tax authorities. “Why?” one may ask.

Law No. 7418 on Amendment of Press Law and Certain Laws (“Amendment Law”) is published in Official Gazette of October 18, 2022 and introduced significant amendments on certain laws including the Press Law No. 5187, the Turkish Criminal Code No. 5237 and the Law No. 5651 on the Regulation of Broadcasts via the Internet and the Prevention of Crimes Committed through Such Broadcast (“Law No. 5651”) and the Law No. 5809 Electronic Communications Law (“Law No. 5809”).

The long – awaited publication of the amendments to the Government Decision No. 1134/2010 on the approval of the Implementing Regulations of Law 84/1998 on Trademarks and Geographical Indications, republished, (the “Trademarks Regulation”) brought by the Government Decision no. 1197/2022, took place on 7 October 2022, when the amendments also entered into force.

In Montenegro, the Law on protection of personal data is still in power, and was last amended on April 3, 2017 („LPPI“).

The Turkish Competition Board (“Board”) conditionally approved the acquisition of sole control over Ferro Corporation (“Ferro”) by American Securities LLC (“American Securities”) through its solely controlled affiliate ASP Prince Holdings Inc. (“Prince”). The Board determined that the transaction would result in the significant impediment of effective competition in the market for glass coatings for home appliances in Turkey. That being said, the Board conditionally approved the transaction subject to the commitments submitted by the parties to the European Commission (“Commission”) on the grounds that the commitments removed the entire horizontal overlap between the parties in the horizontally affected markets in Turkey. 

The Law on the Amendment of Press Law numbered 7418 and Some Other Laws [“Amendment Law”] published in the Official Gazette No. 31987 dated October 18, 2022. While the amendments adopted mainly in the Press Law significantly expand the scope of this law, the Amendment Law also includes new regulations with regard to online news tools, the number of which are increasing day by day as opposed to printed media.

With the Draft Communique on Principles Regarding Companies Whose Shares Will Be Traded on the Venture Capital Market [“Draft Communique”] published in the Official Gazette on 20 September 2022, it will be possible to sell shares of a non-public joint stock company to qualified investors on the stock with the status of a public company. The Draft Communique also regulates the liabilities and exemptions of such companies. It is expected to enter into force soon following collecting public opinion.

On October 19, 2022, Law 283/2022 was published in the Official Journal of Romania, introducing probably the largest number of changes made to the Labor Code in recent years, including several substantial amendments and additions highly relevant to employers. Thus, employers must take appropriate action to implement, and ensure immediate compliance with, these changes, the law coming into force in 3 days from its publication.

The Digital Services Act ("DSA") was published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 27 October 2022. This means that the Act, targeting numerous online services, will enter into force only 20 days later, on 16 November 2022.

In August 2019, the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Administration (MRDPA) has organized the first consultation meeting on dysfunctionalities at the level of the normative and institutional framework in the fields of territorial planning, urbanism and construction and related fields, with the aim that the entire legislation in this matter be reorganized under the rule of a single normative act complying with the current needs of digitalization, simplification and professional responsibility.

This case summary includes an analysis of the Ankara 2nd Administrative Court’s (“the Court of First Instance”) Sahibinden SoE decision (E. 2022/254, 15.04.2022) in which the Court of First Instance stays of execution of the Board’s decision where the Board imposed an administrative monetary fine on Sahibinden for hindering and complicating the on-site inspection as per Article 16 of the Law No 4054 on the Protection of Competition (“Law No 4054”) based on the grounds that the deleted WhatsApp messages did not contain business related issues and were still accessible from the other employees’ WhatsApp group (21-27/354-174, 27.05.2021).  

Recently, there have been certain significant developments regarding the data protection practice and some important guidelines have been published by the Turkish Personal Data Protection Authority. Below is an overview on the important points of the relevant developments.

The Spanish personal data protection authority has recently fined a natural person with EUR 10,000.00 for publishing personal data of a third person without the latter’s consent on an online blog.