The draft Code of Territorial Planning, Urbanism, and Construction (the Urbanism Code) has recently been approved by the General Secretariat of the Government, on March 29, 2023. Of course, the government’s approval is just one of the steps in implementing the new rules, as the Urbanism Code must also be approved by parliament, promulgated by the president, and then published in the Official Gazette.

The Romanian Civil Procedure Code (CPC) explicitly regulates institutional arbitration within a discrete chapter named “Institutional Arbitration” (Title VII of Book IV) and includes six articles to that effect (Articles 616 – 621 CPC). 

The crypto-assets sector — which includes unbacked and asset-stabilised digital currencies, securities tokens, utility tokens, non- fungible tokens and services related to them — has potential benefits, but is turbulent. During 2022, it experienced valuation plunges, a stablecoin's collapse, the exchange FTX's bankruptcy and concerns about decentralised finance (DeFi) arrangements.

The EU Directives on Work-life balance and on Transparent and predictable working conditions were introduced into the Bulgarian national legislation in August 2022 and brought about significant changes and obligations for the employers. What do they mean for businesses?

The Green Deal for Europe aims to boost the efficient use of resources, helps to keep sustainable environment policy and transforms particular economies of the EU countries by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, by rebuilding immovables in order to reach higher level of energy sustainability, by introducing products with longer sustainability time, by developing products that may be easily recycled, by combating global deforestation, and much more.

Court fees represent an important part of the costs in every legal proceeding. Matters related to court fees in the Republic of Serbia are currently regulated by the Law on Court Fees and the Fee Tariff contained within that law.

The passing of time makes claims unenforceable in front of courts. While in some countries, a simple notice letter interrupts the limitation period, in Hungary creditors who want to avoid the limitation of their claim must initiate a lawsuit. Is it always enough to start litigation to interrupt the limitation of claims in Hungary? The Hungarian Supreme Court addressed this question in a recent case.

The National Bank of Ukraine (“NBU”) recently allowed Ukrainian borrowers to transfer foreign currency (“FX”) funds abroad to fulfil their obligations under the following categories of loans from foreign lenders:

Global law firm Baker McKenzie organized a competition and regulatory conference for pharma in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in Warsaw. During the conference, Baker McKenzie experts highlighted the hot topics of recent developments in EU Competition Law and Pharmaceutical Regulation that have direct effect on companies in the pharma and life sciences sector, discussing practical and pragmatic solutions with special regard to regional aspects in CEE in two round tables. The second one looked at regulatory hot topics and market access challenges in CEE and war-related changes in Ukraine.

After a long period of preparations the Whistleblower Protection Act has been finally passed.

Below is a round-up of selected updates on developments in Europe of ESG regulations and policies. Please note that this list is not comprehensive and may not include all such developments that may be relevant to your business.

The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) gradually continues to lift martial law limitations for cross-border borrowings.

In one of our previous texts we wrote about the recent decision of the Spanish personal data protection authority, by which it fined an employer as the controller of personal data for using the option of audio recording within the employees surveillance system, which data were subsequently used for termination of an employment contract.

Accountability is one of the key notions both in GDPR and the Serbian Data Protection Act.

On 22 March 2023, an amendment to the Transnational Provision of Services Act (Zakon o čezmejnem izvajanju storitev – ZČmIS-1, “Act on Cross-Border Services“) was adopted and partially came into force on 18 April 2023, with individual provisions becoming effective on 1 January 2024.

According to the legislation in force in Hungary, when entering into a sale or lease contract of a real property, the buyer or tenant must declare in the contract that he/she has received a document called energy performance certificate (“EPC”) which certifies the energy performance rating of the property and EPC’s unique identification number shall be included in the contract.

Global law firm Baker McKenzie organized a competition and regulatory conference for pharma in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in Warsaw. During the conference, Baker McKenzie experts highlighted the hot topics of recent developments in EU Competition Law and Pharmaceutical Regulation that have direct effect on companies in the pharma and life sciences sector, discussing practical and pragmatic solutions with special regard to regional aspects in CEE in two round tables. The first one looked at recent competition law developments.

The German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act (Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz; "LkSG") is effective from 1 January 2023 for companies and branches based in Germany with more than 3,000 employees, with further extension to companies with more than 1,000 employees from 1 January 2024.