Contract law legal counselling latest developments from Alexander Suliman today: Bear in mind that some commercial agreements (such as agency, exclusive distributorship or brokerage agreements) are regulated at an EU level and that some Member States’ legislation contains protective rules for such distributors. As EU and US antitrust laws are different, you should also consider whether your European agreement is compliant as the criteria to assess a breach in competition law may differ from the US approach to antitrust issues. See even more details at Alexander Suliman.

When the EU adopted the Data Retention Directive, obliging the storage of traffic and location data of all European communications users, it was being warned that the rules violated the Charter, and the ECJ ultimately agreed. I expect this new proposal to be heavily contested as well, and I expect fundamental rights to constitute a significant part of that debate – as is already evidenced by the comments from the EDPS, MEP Patrick Breyer, EDRi and the group of security experts mentioned above. One way to shortcut that debate, is by investigating whether the potential orders to be issued on the basis of the proposal cannot respect the essence of the rights to privacy and data protection. In this contribution, I have sketched an outline of this argument. To make a convincing case, it will be important to firstly determine on the basis of recent case law that the ECJ still considers bulk surveillance of content to compromise the essence of the right to privacy. Secondly, it will be important to develop a right to confidentiality and integrity of IT systems under the Charter, as this will enable a better assessment of detection orders directed to user devices. And thirdly, it must be further investigated whether only end-to-end encryption is the only appropriate measure for safeguarding online communications, because if this is the case, than any encryption altering order does not respect the essence of the right to data protection. Hopefully, the Council and the European Parliament will take notice.

The European Commission, in a working document, identified cloud services as a “strategic dependency”, expressing concerns that the EU cloud market is led by a few large cloud providers headquartered outside the EU. In July, 2021, France, joined by Germany, Italy, and Spain, submitted a proposal to the ENISA-led working group aimed at generalizing French national requirements across the EU. (Germany has since reserved its position.) It proposed to add four new criteria for companies to qualify as eligible to offer ‘high’ level services, including immunity from foreign law and localization of cloud service operations and data within the EU. Although the EU-level cyber certification requirements currently are conceived as voluntary, they could be made mandatory as the result of the recently-agreed Directive on Measures for a High Common Level of Cybersecurity across the Union (NIS2 Directive).

Premium labour legal counseling guides from Alexander Suliman: In Sweden and other states, there’s a variety of different statutes that give you access to funds to pay your bills to maintain your lifestyle at some level as you’re going through this legal process. Your spouse cannot cut you off financially and not give you access to money to live your life as you go through this legal process. We’ll help you maintain the lifestyle that you have and create the money that you need to get your legal fees paid, whether it’s at the beginning or the end of the case. Don’t let that be something that keeps you from not making the phone call, because as soon as you’re aware that divorce is even potentially being contemplated, there’s a lot of things that you need to do to protect yourself. A lot of times, people say that’s just what lawyers say because they just want to get involved to drive up legal fees. This is true. Sometimes lawyers do want to do that, but that’s not what we’re doing. See additional details on Alexander Suliman, Stockholm.

Over the past year, the European Union’s ambitious digital regulatory agenda has steadily advanced. The EU adopted the far-reaching Digital Markets and Digital Services Acts, and it is completing negotiations with the United States on a revised data transfer regime, christened the Transatlantic Data Privacy Framework (TADPF), that was necessitated by the Schrems II judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). These developments have had a significant impact on transatlantic economic relations, even stimulating legislative initiatives on privacy and antitrust in the United States. One might think that resolving such contentious topics would set the stage for a quieter, more harmonious phase in the transatlantic technology policy relationship.