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.

With the Regulation Amending the Distance Contracts Regulation [“Amendment Regulation”] published on the Official Gazette on 23 August 2022, many amendments were introduced to the Distance Contracts Regulation [the “Regulation”] published on the Official Gazette numbered 29188 and dated 27 November 2014. Many of these amendments aim to provide harmonisation with the amended Law no.6563 on the Regulation of Electronic Commerce [the “Law”] on 7 July 2022, and to regulate the liabilities of intermediary service providers in a comprehensive manner.

According to its latest ruling, the Spanish tax authority certainly considers so. However, the recent boom in the popularity of NFTs poses more questions than answers from the perspective of indirect taxes.

Electricity generation, transmission, distribution, and trade are considered public services by court decisions. The liberal economy policies enforced following the entry into force of the 1982 Constitution also find their place in the electricity market. Accordingly, providing the public services via civil law contracts was made possible with the amendments to the Turkish Constitution in 1999.

Law no. 53/2003 - Labour Code (the “Labour Code”) will be amended by Law no. 283/ 2022 for amending and supplementing Law no. 53/2003, as well as by Government Emergency Ordinance no. 57/2019 regarding the Administrative Code, which was published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 1013 of 19.10.2022 (“Law 283/ 2022”).

On 18 June 2022, the Regulation on Criteria for Awarding Incentives to Employers who Employ New Residents in the Republic of Serbia, published in the Off. Gazette of RS no. 67/2022 (“the Regulation”), entered into force.

According to the Hungarian Labor Code, employers shall keep records of the durations of regular working time and overtime, standby duty, periods of leave and overtime work performed. The working time records should be updated on a daily basis and should contain facilities to identify the time of commencement and end of any regular and overtime work and standby duty. Records of the durations of regular working time and overtime may be maintained in the form of verifying the work schedule made out in writing at the end of the month, updated on a daily basis. The Labor Code, however, does not address the question where the working time records should be physically stored.

The Hungarian Parliament passed a law at the beginning of October 2022 to set up a new anti-corruption authority called “Integrity Authority” as a part of a legislative package, that was aimed to reach a compromise with the EU regarding the withholding of funds.

Discussions on the Law on the Amendment to the Press Law and Some Laws" which is known as the Law on Combating Disinformation among the public and which includes regulations and amendments about social media and internet news sites (“Law Amendment”), was published in the Official Gazette dated 18.10.2022 and numbered 31987.

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.