Nothing worse than something spoiling your party. Croatia had a perfect tourism season, with plenty of guests staying at hotels, resorts, camps, or yachts. Other industries are doing great as well. On top of everything – Croatia is admitted to the eurozone as of January 2023, and the National Bank reduced the required reserve ratio and abolished the minimum foreign currency liquidity, strongly increasing banks’ cash resources! Everything was ready for a 2023 party – plenty of funds within the banks, industry in its upward trend, the real estate sector developing, new unicorns ahead of us – it seemed like financing possibilities would be all around, with low interest rates and plenty of opportunities!

Legal markets, much like other markets, are susceptible to global tendencies and changes shaping the industry. CEELM sat down with Divjak Topic Bahtijarevic & Krka Partner Ema Mendjusic Skugor to discuss the Croatian legal market and its growing pains in keeping up with global trends.

On January 1, 2023, Croatia will finally gain a much-coveted place in the eurozone club. Making the switch is a massive undertaking that will impact every person living and working in the Adriatic country. Eight Croatian legal experts share their insights on how the market will adapt, how the legislative framework will change, and who will stand to gain the most.

The ascendant popularity of ESG across business sectors has also empowered the rise of its evil twin: greenwashing. To look at the interplay between the two and their implications for the pharma industry in CEE, we sat down with CMS Partners Gabriela Staber and Tomas Matejovsky. 

Considering the current state of affairs in CEE, market dynamics have shifted in terms of where investors are looking for safe investment opportunities, with some sectors seeing steadier capital flows and others struggling. Our experts chart the current hotspots and consider whether the markets are set to shift again.

On November 9, 2022, Magyar Telekom’s Legal Service Evolution Squad unveiled its largest service development project yet – the Legal Magic Book – during the company’s annual Love Your Lawyer Day event. We sat down with Magyar Telekom Group Legal Director Daniel Szeszler and Legal Service Evolution Squad Product Owner Botond Ungvary to learn more about the book and the team behind it.

I wish us wider representation in senior positions in the legal profession, equal treatment, access to promotion, full and effective participation, and equal opportunities for leadership. And I wish for none of us to experience diminished opportunities or unfavorable career limitations because of gender.

With an average of 30 transactions in the last five years, Delivery Hero has developed its own, internal, dedicated M&A team. We sat down with Director and Head of M&A Legal Deniz Ozkan Ergun to learn more about how her team came to be and how they manage their pipeline of projects.

The Moldovan Government continues to promote in-depth reforms designed to meet the challenges of a digital economy. The last summer was marked by the adoption of new regulations aiming to stimulate private-sector innovation. The new legislation also instituted new responsibilities for digital platforms for creating, sharing, and streaming digital content to Moldovan users.

Direct marketing consists of any marketing that relies on direct communication or distribution to individual consumers, rather than through a third party. Unlike traditional public relations campaigns pushed out through a third party, such as media publications or mass media, direct marketing campaigns operate independently to communicate with target audiences directly.

Despite the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, IT remains one of the leading industries in the country. According to surveys, a bit more than 10% of IT specialists (mostly women, since a large part of men are not allowed to leave the country) have moved to other countries since the start of the invasion. Some of them were relocated to foreign offices of international IT companies or started working for foreign companies, while others keep working remotely for their Ukrainian employers.

COVID-19 is over – well, almost over. We are now left with the aftermath of a baby boom, some Bored Apes, and the Metaverse. All these new phenomena that surged during the pandemic eventually turned their attention to law firms, for wide-ranging legal considerations associated with all kinds of communication, from the internet, to e-commerce, to OTT, and telecommunications. Technology, media, and telecommunications, otherwise known as TMT, are now the fastest-moving areas.

A quarter century ago, when I started my career as a lawyer in the media and telecoms field, I learned the importance of understanding technology, its advancement, and in particular the importance of making it work in the best interests of your client.

Recently, several articles were published on the security and misuse of electronic communications. These tended to conclude that the responsibility for security against abuse lies with the public communications service providers (PCSP), which logically implies that they are also responsible for such misuse. PCSPs are an essential and indispensable part of the TMT sector, and it is, therefore, important to address their liability in such situations for legal certainty.

Even though the use of the term license agreement in the context of software has been globally accepted for ages, some lawmakers actually have something else in mind. A license agreement under Croatian law doesn’t actually apply to software per se, as common knowledge might imply. It applies to inventions, know-how, trademarks, and other so-called industrial property rights.

The growth of e-commerce and online advertising in Bulgaria in the last two decades has been impressive. The COVID-19 pandemic gave an additional boost to the digital economy. Amid such rapid development and almost 16 years after its entry into force, the Bulgarian Electronic Commerce Act (the ECA) feels quite outdated.

Romania benefits from being one of the EU countries with lower cinematographic production costs, and that is why it is on the radar of many international studios. The cumulative annual turnover of the film industry in Romania is approximately EUR 53 million, derived mainly from foreign productions in Romania.

The recent decision no. 35/2022 issued by the Hellenic Data Protection Authority (HDPA) on July 13, 2022 (Decision), marked a record-high EUR 20 million fine against US company Clearview AI Inc. (Clearview). This Decision adds even higher pressure on Clearview, on top of other data protection authorities’ (DPAs) relevant decisions (French, Italian, British), while a similar decision is expected soon by the Austrian regulator, all as a response to a series of complaints filed by an alliance of non-profit privacy-driven organizations.