News

On 13 December 2024, the new Regulation (EU) 2023/988 of the European Parliament and of the Council on General Product Safety (“GPSR”) will come into force. This regulation replaces the more than 20-year-old General Product Safety Directive (GPSD) and brings with it numerous innovations. The GPSR applies directly in all Member States of the European Union.

An employer who is concerned that an employee will compete with them after leaving the company will consider agreeing to a post-contractual non-competition clause.

For example, such a clause aims to prevent the employee from working as an employee for a competitor after the end of the employment relationship or from setting up a rival business of their own.

The requirements that the legal systems of the individual states place on the agreement, the form, and the cancellation of post-contractual non-competition clauses with employees vary greatly.

We are delighted to announce that experienced lawyers Marc Manciet and Soraya Racette will join our team in Paris as of January 1, 2025. Together with Maurice Hartmann, they will lead our Paris office, bringing extensive expertise in various areas of law.

In May 2023, Directive (EU) 2023/970 of the European Parliament and of the Council on strengthening the application of the principle of equal pay for men and women for equal work or work of equal value through pay transparency and enforcement mechanisms was adopted, and Member States are required to implement this di-rective into national law by 07/06/2026.

On 29 December 2023, the National People's Congress (the legislature of the People's Republic of China) made significant amendments to the criminal law.

This change in the law, which has meanwhile come into force, is in line with the central government's promise to sharpen the focus on lawful conduct by private companies in China and to fight corruption with all severity.

In recent months, the EU Parliament has passed a large number of ESG-related (ESG: Environmental, Social and Governance) legislative proposals. Given the speed and variety of new laws, it is important for entrepreneurs and organisations to stay informed about the latest developments in ESG legislation. Below we provide an overview of the current ESG regulatory requirements in the package of measures relating to the Green Deal and explain what companies should consider in the near future.

Since the beginning of 2022, a large number of data protection laws have been enacted in China. Since there was initially a lack of necessary concreteness and harmonisation of these laws, their specific scope and significance was difficult to estimate for foreign enterprises in China. In 2023 and 2024, there has been a large number of legal amendments and significant concretisation in data protection law.

The beginning of the year saw significant changes to corporate law. In Germany, a significant reform came into force with the Act on the Modernization of Partnership Law (MoPeG). In Austria, the catalog of company forms was expanded to include the 'flexible corporation', which has offered new opportunities for business activities since 1 January 2024. China will introduce comprehensive changes to company law from July 1, 2024, which will affect foreign investors and management in particular. There are also important developments in France, Italy, Slovakia and Turkey, which will each introduce new legal requirements and changes to the corporate environment.

Today, more and more business activities and professional activities are shifting to the digital world. The coronavirus pandemic has contributed significantly to this trend, as it has forced us to adapt to new realities. This situation, as well as the efficiency and convenience of remote work, has created a new working reality, which in turn brings new risks of which many of us were previously unaware. We are talking about cybercrime, which companies in particular can suffer.

With telemedicine / remote treatment, healthcare medical services are provided by means of audiovisual communication technologies over geographical or temporal distances. Telemedicine is diverse and can be provided both in regional rural care or across countries as well as in the specialised care of rare diseases or by specialists that are not available everywhere. Especially after the coronavirus pandemic, telemedicine has increased in importance.

Most countries of the European Union have already transposed Directive (EU) 2019/1937 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2019 on the protection of persons who report breaches of Union law within their legal systems. There are some legal differences in how the Whistleblower Directive has been transposed into the various laws.

In the case of M&A transactions, all participants strive for a quick closing and thus legal certainty in the future. Previously, an M&A transaction was checked ex ante by the responsible competition authorities if certain turnover thresholds were exceeded to determine whether the project would create or strengthen a dominant position. However, this legal certainty is now lost due to the most recent practice and case law of the European Court of Justice (hereinafter referred to as “ECJ”), since, even if the turnover thresholds are not met, there is the possibility of an ex post content review and, if necessary, a reversal obligation.

The decision to purchase a holiday home is often made on a wave of emotion, with the exuberance of great memories of a beautiful summer holiday. But however enthusiastic you are about the beauty of your home and its area, it is important to also keep an eye on the costs in order to avoid unpleasant surprises later on leading to “buyer’s remorse”. These start with the ancillary costs of the actual purchase and can continue until the inheritance tax in the case of an inheritance.

In the following article, we review the costs you need to take into account for Italy as they occur on the purchase of the property, during its ongoing use, on its sale or transfer as a gift, or even in the event of inheritance.

The decision to purchase a holiday home is often made on a wave of emotion, with the exuberance of great memories of a beautiful summer holiday. But however enthusiastic you are about the beauty of your home and its area, it is important to also keep an eye on the costs in order to avoid unpleasant surprises later on leading to “buyer’s remorse”. These start with the ancillary costs of the actual purchase and can continue until the inheritance tax in the case of an inheritance.

In the following article, we review the costs you need to take into account for Turkey as they occur on the purchase of the property, during its ongoing use, on its sale or transfer as a gift, or even in the event of inheritance.

“Whistleblowing” describes the uncovering of abuses, such as corruption, money laundering, and environmental hazards, by whistleblowers who have acquired insider knowledge due to their professional activity. Whistleblowers must usually accept serious personal or professional disadvantages as a result of their reports.

To protect whistleblowers, the EU already issued the Whistleblowing Directive in 2019. This directive stipulates that enterprises have the obligation to establish channels and procedures to enable reports of abuses and breaches of the law.

On 12 January 2023 the Regulation (EU) 2022/2560 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 December 2022 on foreign subsidies distorting the internal market (hereinafter: the “FSR Regulation”) has entered into force.

The FSR Regulation, which will apply from 12 July 2023, equips the European Commission (hereinafter: the “Commission”) with new tools preventing distortion in competition of the internal (EU) market resulting from “foreign subsidies” meaning subsidies granted by the non-EU states to the entities operating on the internal market.

With a judgment from 2019, the ECJ had clearly set the direction: From the Working Hours Directive in conjunction with Art. 31 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFR), there is the obligation of the Member States to ensure that employers introduce an “objective, reliable and accessible system that can be used to measure the daily working hours worked by employees”; this follows from the right of employees to effective health protection and compliance with the legally prescribed (weekly and daily) maximum working hours. However, the ECJ had not set a specific deadline for the Member States.

Over three full years, the requirements of the ECJ then remained without any significant practical consequences, with a few exceptions that we will present below on a country-specific basis. And it was probably generally assumed that legislative intervention would be required for the practical implementation of the judgment. However, the German Federal Labour Court has now taken the ball directly and formulated directly from existing law specific obligations incumbent on the employer even without legislative measures.

The applicable e-commerce policy is over 20 years old. That is why the European Union launched a regulatory package for online platforms a few years ago.

On 16 February 2022, the law to transpose European Directive 2019/1937 was definitively passed in France. It was confirmed by the Constitutional Council on 17 March 2022 and officially published on 21 March 2022 and entered into force on 1 September 2022.

The development and commercialisation of drones is making relentless progress. Due to the wide range of applications and the rapid technical advances, unmanned aircraft – or “UAS” (=Unmanned Aircraft System) for short – are predicted to be a promising future.

In case of a hacking attack, unauthorised attackers attempt to access external PCs, notebooks, smartphones, tablets or even entire corporate networks. Since the frequency of such attacks has increased massively in Europe over the past year, in this article we look at the successful hacker attack from the outside, which encrypts the affected systems in such a way that the company can no longer access its system at all.

The European Commission’s Vertical Block Exemption Regulation (“VBER”), which was previously potentially applicable to distribution, whereby agreements between manufacturers or suppliers and retailers are exempt from the ban on cartels, ceased to be in force on 31/05/2022, because the original period of validity of 12 years was reached.
These new versions bring some changes which relax requirements compared to the previous legal situation, but also tighten requirements, which primarily take into account the area of tension between online/offline sales.

Cryptocurrency, big data, artificial intelligence, data theft, cloud, virtual, augmented, or mixed reality, cyber warfare, telemedicine, social media, autonomous driving, Industry 4.0, Criminal Law 4.0, NFTs – these are not the only issues that are bringing about the era of the fourth so-called digital revolution. Each of these digital changes is bringing new challenges to all facets of society – the link between law and technology is one of the biggest. An example that illustrates the special relationship between legal and digital technologies very well are NFTs (non-fungible tokens).

The "current turning point" in connection with the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine has not only a political but also perhaps an even greater economic dimension. The sharp rise in the price of raw materials and energy has led to a dramatic increase in costs for companies. The interruption of supply chains often causes production downtimes in industry. Despite all the harmonisation of laws that has taken place in the last 20 to 30 years, especially in the European legal sphere, this issue has remained untouched by efforts at legal standardisation. The reason for this was apparently a lack of topicality. Therefore, with this article, we provide an overview of how this topic is handled legally with regard to three key questions in the respective countries of our partner law firms.

Already in 2020, the European Commission presented the draft for a new EU regulation on a single market for digital services, through which the latest developments in the field of digital services are to be incorporated and regulated at EU level. The proposal aims at better protection of consumer rights in the digital environment and at the joint internal market-related enforcement potential of the EU Member States.

At the beginning of the new year, Schindhelm attorneys at law Maurice Hartman and Philippe C. Bastian are opening their new office in a top location - 1 Faubourg Saint Honoré in the 8th arrondissement - next to the prestigious Rue Royale.

The following applies to contracts that came into force after 01/10/2016: If a change in circumstances that could not have been foreseen when concluding the contract makes it excessively costly for one of the parties to fulfil its contractual obligations, the party that has not voluntarily assumed this economic risk may require its contractual partner to renegotiate the contract. For contracts concluded before 01/10/2016, the rule described above and introduced by the 2016 reform of French contract law does not apply. A claim for adjustment or renegotiation of the contractual provisions exists in these contracts only if the contract contains a provision that expressly provides for a contractual adjustment.

We are pleased to announce that SCWP Schindhelm Services SE, Alliance of European Commercial Law Firms, has opened a new office in Paris. Our 230 lawyers at 29 locations in 14 countries will thus support you with international  competence, commitment and valuable local experience in every one of your projects.

The presidential decree no. 32 issued on 12/09/2018 to protect the value of the Turkish cur-rency ("Decree") sets the limitation of foreign currency and foreign currency indexed contracts and stipulates that these contracts must be converted within 30 days into Turkish Lira (“TL”).

Online platforms and search engines dominate Internet trading. Unilateral business conditions, non-transparent algorithms and rankings are unfortunately not uncommon.