The entire CEELM team has been following the war in Ukraine unfold with a deep sense of powerless concern. At such a trying time for all our readers, partners, and friends in Ukraine we at CEELM wish to extend our deepest wishes for their safety and the safety of their loved ones. We still hope this unnecessary conflict comes to a swift and peaceful conclusion.

KNP Law, February 28, 2022: In 3 days, more than 2000 lawyers from many countries have joined the online lawyer database, which provides free legal aid to those fleeing Ukraine.

In view of the gravity of the current situation in Ukraine, the EU has introduced further restrictive measures related to Russia's finance, defence, energy, aviation, and space sectors. This Legal Insight will give you a brief overview of the sanctions regime as of 27 February 2022.

Due to Russia’s armed attack on Ukraine, many Ukrainian citizens have lost or been forced to hurriedly abandon their households and seek help from foreign neighbors. Poland is one of the countries Ukraine has access to almost immediately.

Grateful to all of you that have already donated to support those suffering this brutal war. We are receiving many requests on offers to help. Please see below a list of organizations that are working around the clock supporting the people of Ukraine during this brutal war.

On 24 February 2022, Russia started a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, being part of its aggression against our country commenced in 2014. Europe has not seen armed conflicts of such scale and brutality for decades. Reliable evidence confirms that Russian troops are making indiscriminate attacks including air raids, ballistic missile strikes and bombings. Residential housing, utilities, critical infrastructure are being destroyed all over Ukraine. The United Nations reports at least 240 civilian casualties and 64 deaths in Ukraine as of 26 February 2022. Apart from that, hundreds of thousands of peaceful Ukrainians had to flee violence to Western Ukraine and neighboring countries.

Hydrogen seems to become the new trend in sustainable energy production and there is an effervescence of clean hydrogen production projects across the world. Thus, it is estimated that clean hydrogen could meet 24% of energy world demand by 2050 and there are 750 hydrogen projects in the pipeline of the European Green Hydrogen Alliance. With the European Green Deal aim of climate-neutrality by 2050, decarbonizing the energy sector, which accounts for 75% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, is an essential step, hydrogen being regarded as a key component to deliver decarbonized energy.

In Turkey, 2021 continued to be dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the various legal difficulties and ambiguities that it brought. This raised several questions on how to apply the Turkish data protection law and related legislation, in particular about how to properly process data on health, vaccination status, and PCR tests.

Despite uncertainty due to the pandemic, the pace of merger activity in Turkey has not decreased and merger control is still one of the Turkish Competition Authority’s (TCA) key enforcement areas. The Law on Protection of Competition (Competition Law) amendment in June 2020 was a milestone for merger control in Turkey as it changed the substantive test for assessment of mergers. Below are some observations regarding the adoption of the new test and the TCA’s recent approach to merger control and remedies.

Crowdfunding is a new generation funding and investment system which allows different individuals to invest in a project in exchange for shares or interest. Crowdfunding offers an alternative funding market that creates a win-win situation for entrepreneurs and investors.

Turkey is the world’s tenth largest agricultural producer and a hub for many top global players in food production. The country is accelerating the integration of sustainability principles into the sector’s growth strategies.

Almost ten years ago, in 2012, major changes were introduced in Hungarian employment law, including a new Employment Code. The updated rules had a significant impact on market practice and, consequently, on the volume of employment litigation. The latter number was further influenced, however, by the new Code of Civil Procedure, which came into effect in January 2018. In this article, we offer insight and explanation for the possible causes of the decreasing number of employment lawsuits.

Picture a situation where a company divests a part of its business to create a new company. Employees are transferred to the spin-off company too. Based on Article 75 of the Employment Relationship Act (ZDR-1), the provisions on the transfer of an undertaking (change of employer) then apply. The article governs the joint and several liability of both the transferor and transferee company; however, it limits liability solely to the claims of employees who were actually transferred.

Digitalization and technology have seen incredible evolutions over the past years worldwide. This development has fostered the perfect environment for the gig economy to be able to sustain incredible growth. Short-term working agreements between companies and workers, which are paid after every undertaken task, are at the foundation of the gig economy and they seem to be more popular with every passing day. The COVID-19 pandemic has proven to have been yet another factor that allowed this market sector to reach new heights, with more and more people turning to online platforms as an additional source of income. These people are generally labeled as ‘platform workers.’

As the COVID-19 pandemic globally swept away the business-as-usual concept, many countries, including Croatia, were faced with a rising problem of workplace-based COVID-19 transmissions. Croatia had a remote work (RW) framework initially introduced in 2003, but its application in practice was considered rather exotic. Once RW became one of the main workplace-related responses to COVID-19, authorities and employers were suddenly faced with interpretation and implementation problems. As a temporary solution, the Ministry of Labor and Pension System (Ministry) issued a number of opinions regarding the RW regime. These opinions were intended to loosen the regulatory grip, usually by turning a blind eye to unambiguous and mandatory statutory requirements, for example, by interpreting that a pandemic constitutes such circumstances under which employers are allowed to unilaterally impose a RW regime.

Since 2020, employers and employees in the Czech Republic, as well as elsewhere, have been preoccupied with issues relating to COVID-19, not least the employees’ testing, quarantines, or vaccination. It is without question that the pandemic has left its footprint on the Czech labor market and provided an impetus to many current trends. Looking beyond the pandemic, this article will focus on the development of the Czech employment market in a post-COVID-19 world and the role that Czech employment law will play in it.

Based on the new Act on Support During Short-Time Work, also known as Kurzarbeit, the employers’ new permanent support scheme will apply as of January 1, 2022, in Slovakia. The basic aim of the new regulation is to compensate employers financially for temporary loss of working hours and thereby preserve employment. Kurzarbeit can be applied if an employer is forced to reduce its operational activities due to temporary external factors beyond its control that have a negative economic impact on its business, particularly the declaration of a state of emergency, state of crisis, or force majeure. Furthermore, the Kurzarbeit allowance applies only in case at least one-third of the employer’s workforce is not assigned work for at least 10% of their working hours.

After the Russian Federation had launched a military operation against Ukraine; the U.S., the EU, the UK, and a number of other countries began imposing broad economic sanctions against Russia. Those imposed by the United States are among the most economically effective sanctions.