Contributed by Kolcuoglu Demirkan Kocakli.

Contributed by Slaughter and May.

On April 24, 2023, the EU Council consented to applying the Hague Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil or Commercial Matters (the “Convention”) in relations with Ukraine.

The European Commission launched a Call for Evidence, which entails asking for feedback from the business community and the general public on adopting new Guidelines on exclusionary abuses of dominance.

With the latest amendments to the Law on Registration Procedure in the Business Registers Agency, another step has been taken on the digitization of public administration.

The participation of women in business is not only a matter of gender equality and social justice but is also a crucial prerequisite for sustainable economic growth and social progress, particularly in the face of the multiple challenges that humanity is currently confronting. The inclusion of women in business reduces unemployment and ensures greater economic growth, which is of particular importance for countries in transition, such as the Republic of Serbia.

May 2023 – As May 2023 marks the fifth anniversary of the implementation of GDPR, we have prepared an overview of the five years of regulatory struggle in Romania since the regulation came into effect. By examining the value of the sanctions and the types of violations, we can identify some regulatory trends of the local practice.

At the 120th session held on 7 April 2023, the Council of the Commission for Protection of Competition issued an Instruction on the content and method of submitting a request for imposing data protection measure (“Instructions“), which specifies in more detail the content and method of submitting a request for imposing a measure of protection of data source and/or certain data, in accordance with the Law on the Protection of Competition (“Law“).

While allegations of corruption continue to make headlines in Austria, the Ministry of Justice responded in January with draft legislation on the Corruption Law Amendment Act 2023.

The commercial law team at Eversheds Sutherland in the Czech Republic has selected the TOP 10 case law decisions of 2022.

In the Hungarian HoReCa sector, the question of how much competition there is in the market for beverage procurement has been on the agenda of the Hungarian competition authority and the political discourse for some time.

An administrative novelty comes early this year from the Serbian Business Registers Agency (“SBRA”) by introducing electronic registration with the Registry of Bidders.

Governance is primarily covered in the ESRS G1 Business Conduct section of the European Sustainability Reporting Standards framework (ESRS, November 2022 draft). Requirement G1-1 represents one of its six main areas. In this article, we cover the information required for reports under the G1-1 Corporate Culture and Business Conduct requirement.

Due diligence review, which is frequent in acquisition transactions, basically refers to an examination of the target company prior to the buyer's acquisition. This term originates from Anglo-American legal system, and Swiss-Turkish doctrine has yet to generate a new term and thus uses the term “due diligence” in their legal terminology.

With technological advancements changing both how antitrust laws are enforced and how undertakings violate competition laws, the fourth industrial revolution and the rapid growth of AI continue to affect this area of law, as many others. It is impossible to ignore the potential for AI to conquer markets and its ability to spot and fix basic market balance violations. Despite the benefits of technology for customers, it also threatens their interests by distorting market dynamics and impacting competition.

In a recent decision, the Supreme Court ruled on the validity of a provision in an agreement on a future agreement and which provided for an "automatic" transfer of the ownership title to the object of the sale if the future agreement was not concluded within a certain period of time. Essentially, both an agreement on a future agreement, which anticipated the subsequent conclusion of the transfer agreement, and a conditional transfer agreement itself were included in one document. The Supreme Court found that such an arrangement did not invalidate the agreement.

April 2023 – On 12 April 2023, the Turkish Competition Authority (“Authority”) announced that it initiated a sector inquiry into mobile ecosystems. The sector inquiry aims to identify the possible competitive and anti-competitive effects caused by mobile ecosystems, develop effective policies based on them, and ultimately establish a competitive market in the digital economy.

Last Thursday the Court of Justice of the European Union ("CJEU") issued a long awaited ruling on damages resulting from a data protection infringement (C-300/21). Since the Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (General Data Protection Regulation; "GDPR") came into force on 25 May 2018, claims for damages under Art 82 GDPR due to alleged data protection violations like unlawful data processing or incompliance with the GDPR as well as in the context of data breaches or leaks have been steadily increasing. The CJEU's recent ruling clarifies essential issues but raises just as many questions.