The German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act is a major advancement in the supply chain network, improving international human rights and environmental standards across the board. It focuses on issues of child labour, health and safety standards, and the role of trade unions, and will have substantial effects on all relevant parties concerned due to its scope and importance. For instance, the Act bans all sorts of conduct from discrimination to forced labour. Serbia in particular will be considerably impacted, since Germany is the country's largest trade partner.

Are compliance teams a necessary evil or effective facilitators of business success? At the CEE Legal Matters GC Summit held in Istanbul, legal experts from across Europe discussed how to best foster a culture of compliance and ethics in order to benefit businesses, as well as why multidisciplinary knowledge and an agile approach are crucial for compliance teams.

Does your business produce computers or other electronic or electrical equipment? Maybe you make machinery and equipment, pharmaceuticals, medical devices or food? Do you have 50 or more employees? Then your company is likely to be subject to the new cybersecurity regulations. The same applies if your activities are in the chemical industry or you provide a variety of digital services – for instance cloud computing, data centre services or online marketplaces.

Since the beginning of this year, the Personal Data Protection Office has issued fines of almost CZK 4,500,000 for breaches of the GDPR in connection with the processing of personal data via cookies.

On 11 July 2023, the European Securities and Markets Authority (“ESMA”) published a public statement (“ESMA Statement”) regarding sustainability-related disclosure requirements in prospectuses for both equity and non-equity securities.

Although the deadline for transposing Directive (EU) 2019/1937 on the protection of persons who report breaches of Union law (the Whistleblowing Directive) into national law passed on 17 December 2021, the Czech Republic has been among those Member States struggling to adopt a corresponding act into local legislation. Nonetheless, after turbulent discussions and legislative proposals, the bill has finally been passed and came into force on 1 August 2023.