The Amendment of the Austrian Copyright Act fundamentally revised the Copyright contract law. An entire series of new provisions for the protection of authors was implemented. But what does this mean for (future) license holders? Let us take a look!

Nowadays, the importance of international transportation and logistics activities has increased since the commercial relations surpassed the national borders. The most common type of carriage of goods is undoubtedly the road transportation. As a matter of fact, 76.1% of goods are transported by road in Turkey, 69.5% in the USA and 45% in Europe. Taking this into account, to determine common standards between the states regarding the documents used in carriage of goods by road and the responsibility of the carrier, “Convention on The Contract For The International Carriage Of Goods By Road” (Convention Relative Au Contrat De Transport İnternational Per Marchandises Par Route) [“CMR”] was adopted by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) in 1956, and was entered into force in 1961. The CMR, to which Turkey became a party with a reservation on Article 47 on October 31, 1995, has the force of law in the Turkish legal system.

According to a new government decree published in the Hungarian Gazette on 26 September 2022, taxpayers can pay their local business tax advance and local business tax from 1 January 2023 by transferring the amount in euro or US dollars. Taxpayers belonging to a special economic zone can pay the local business tax to the account opened for this purpose by the National Tax and Customs Authority.

The adoption of the Regulation (EU) 2017/745 on medical devices (MDR) and the Regulation (EU) 2017/746 on in vitro diagnostic medical devices (IVDR) triggered changes in the medical devices law on the national level in Poland. The new Polish Medical Devices Act of 7 April 2022 (MDA) stipulates entirely new restrictions to advertising of medical devices (Articles 54-61) that were previously unknown to this industry sector and heavy sanctions for infringements of the new rules (Articles 103 and 104).

The Ministry of Ecology, Spatial Planning, and Urbanism of Montenegro („Ministry“) enacted a Rulebook on closer criteria for the assessment of requests for the issuance of urbanistic-technical conditions for the construction of facilities for the production of electricity from renewable sources of the sun and other renewable sources (“Rulebook”). The Rulebook entered into force on the day of its publication in the Official Gazette of Montenegro, i.e., on 12 October 2022.

Law No 265/2022 on the Trade Registry and on the amendment and completion of other acts of law affecting the registration with the Trade Registry (“Law No. 265/2022”) was published in the Romanian Official Gazette on 26 July 2022 and will enter into force on 26 November 2022.

In April this year the information systems of "Bulgarian Post" became the subject of a serious cyber-attack. The Commission for Personal Data Protection (CPDP) imposed a fine of BGN 1 million (approx. EURO 511.292) and after a 3-month inspection found that the company neglected cyber security and no measures were taken to protect users' data. There was no analysis that would lead to a proper implementation of organizational measures for the protection of data electronically. After the encryption of the data of 680,000 individuals, personal names, social security numbers, and information about personal cards were leaked. The amounts of money that the employees received, as well as their bank accounts, are available. Sensitive data on the age and health status of employees, as well as emails of the company's customers, were also accessed.

Ukraine remains at the forefront of crypto industry despite overall economic hardship caused by the unprovoked Russian military aggression. According to the recent 2022 Global Crypto Adoption Index revealed by Chainalysis, Ukraine has the highest crypto adoption rate in Europe and ranks third globally.

The Government of the Republic of Serbia adopted the Decision on the amount of the minimum wage for the period January-December 2023, by which the minimum wage in Serbia was increased from net 201.22 RSD per working hour to net 230 RSD in 2023.

A joint order of the Ministers of Finance and of Research, Innovation and Digitization, No 3.265/21.453/2022, published in Official Gazette No 967 on 4 October 2022, (the “Order”) amends and supplements joint order of the Ministers of Public Finance and of National Education and Scientific Research No 1.056/4.435/2016 to approve norms on de-ductions for research and development expenses when calculating the taxable result for profit tax purposes.

As a firm that specializes in asset recovery for victims of cybercrime when the assets or scammers are in Bulgaria, we’ve seen that, in the last few years, cyber crimes are increasing worldwide. The fraudsters use similar techniques to mislead their victims: through numerous hacking attacks, they send emails on behalf of and/or to the victims or persons related to them using fake email addresses very similar to the originals. The aim of the fraudsters is to trick the victims to transfer substantial amounts of money to the fraudster’s bank accounts in Bulgaria. Then, the fraudsters usually move the received sum to a bank account in another country or to a bank account of a related company in Bulgaria. These money transfers are in breach of Bulgarian and international AML Law.

The Fiscal Council of the Republic of Serbia published on 29 September 2022 the „Proposal of social and tax policy measures for reducing inequality and poverty risks in the Republic of Serbia“. One of the proposed measures of tax policy for reducing inequality is doubling the limit of non-taxable salary amount, from RSD 19,300 to RSD 40,000 and introduction of non-taxable census of RSD 20,000 per month, to be granted for each household member – dependent. In order to maintain the existing level of budgetary funds, should this proposed reform of individual income tax be adopted, i.e. in order to prevent decrease of budgetary funds due to the reform, it is necessary to increase the salary tax rate from 10% to 15% in parallel with increase of non-taxable census and introduction of non-taxable census for household members-dependents. 

The Icelandic data protection authority (Personuvernd) (“DPA”) recently held that there is a conflict of interest if a data protection officer in a company simultaneously acts as a representative, i.e., member of the same company’s management.

Business that considers environmental and social aspects alongside economic results and is managed in a transparent manner – this is the goal of the ESG framework, which has recently gained much attention. A survey carried out by the prestigious Czech research agency Ipsos for our law firm indicates that this is an issue that is currently being addressed by more than 75% of Czech companies and businesses. Although for the time being ESG obligations apply mainly to companies in the banking and financial sector, it is envisaged that these obligations will be extended to all large, and selected medium-sized, companies in the future. We have discovered that seemingly over half of the companies in the Czech Republic would be inclined to use the services of professionals from law firms or consultancies to implement successful ESG solutions in such a case.

Law no. 275/2022 to repeal Government Emergency Ordinance no. 37/2021 to amend and supplement Law no. 53/2003 - Labour Code has been published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 961 of 3 October 2022 (“Law 275/2022”).

Under many tax treaties mirrored after the OECD Model Treaty, the 183-day period implicates a significant threshold: individuals temporarily present in the treaty-party country (the Host Country) may be taxed by that country on income for personal services performed there if the individual resides in the Host Country for over 183 days in a given tax year. This is called the 183-Day Rule.

Following the tendency among EU states to improve labour legislation, through its 28 July 2022 law ("Law 243/2022"), the Moldovan Parliament passed certain amendments to the Labour Code. These were motivated by the need to align the existing legislation to current realities and the recommendations of the International Labour Organization.

In Turkish Law, contracts of transport are regulated in the fourth book of the Turkish Commercial Code No. 6012 ["TCC"] under the name "Transport Affairs". In this article, the period of delivery, which is one of the key aspects of transport contracts, and the presumption of loss, namely the legal consequence of non-compliance with this period, will be discussed briefly.