In light of Moldova’s recent candidacy for European Union membership, significant political and legal reforms have been undertaken to align the country’s laws with EU standards. Among these changes, the data protection legal framework has seen notable upgrades to mirror the General Data Protection Regulation, with Gladei & Partners Partner Iulian Pasatii emphasizing the introduction of contractual clauses for data transfers and the new concept of subprocessors. According to him, these changes aim to reduce bureaucratic burdens, particularly benefiting Moldova’s IT sector, while presenting opportunities for clearer guidelines and enhanced data protection practices. However, challenges remain as Moldova strives to balance stringent EU-aligned regulations with the flexibility needed for business growth.

Poland has finally implemented the EU Whistleblowing Directive. The new law will enter into force on 25 September 2024, leaving little time to adapt to the new regulations. We highlight the key privacy implications of implementing the whistleblowing procedures in Poland and outline the actions organisations need to take in the upcoming weeks.

High-quality, diverse, and extensive datasets are fundamental for improving machine learning model performance, and web scraping helps gather the necessary data to develop more robust and generalizable models. Web scraping pose different legal challenges, such as data protection, copyright and contractual law related issues. Intellectual property concerns arise as website content, like text, images, and data, is often copyrighted, and scraping without the copyright owner’s permission may lead to infringement claims. Further to this, many websites prohibit scraping in their terms of service, and violating these terms can also result in legal action against the operators of web scrapers.

One of the most current news this year, which turned out to be equally interesting to both legal experts and IT industry professionals, was the adoption of the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act (“AI Act“) as the first regulatory framework regarding artificial intelligence (“AI“) adopted at the EU level. The aim of the AI Act is to bring the European Union (“EU“) to the forefront of the artificial intelligence race, while simultaneously ensuring the protection of human rights, the environment, the rule of law, and democracy.

Articles 13 and 14, along with other provisions of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (the GDPR), require businesses to provide individuals with comprehensive information about the processing of their personal data.

Contributed by Baker McKenzie.