MLex: The EU's latest attempt to reduce cookie banners has stalled as lawmakers struggle to balance consumers' demands for fewer consent requests, publishers' reliance on advertising revenue, and privacy advocates' insistence on robust General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) protections. EU governments are debating a narrower compromise focused on expanding exemptions for low-risk cookie uses, resulting in fewer consent requests, rather than eliminating cookie banners.

MLex: The European Commission has released a template requiring AI developers to disclose training data under the EU AI Act. However, the scope of a key requirement, listing the top 10% of crawled domain names, remains unclear. Confusion centres on whether this should be per content type, known as modality, or in aggregate. How the size of the content should be accounted for is another point of confusion. Such vague wording could incentivise AI firms to limit disclosure. The Commission is preparing further guidance, but has so far declined to comment.

MLex: The European Commission will use the EU’s digital rulebook, the EU General Product Safety Regulation and the upcoming customs unions overhaul to ensure products entering the EU meet its safety standards, Justice Commissioner, Didier Reynders, has said. Reynders told lawmakers that the Commission can organise product safety control and joint products sampling, to ensure that e-commerce platforms as Temu or Shein comply with EU regulations.

MLex: A draft GDPR procedural reform bill would make enforcement more complicated, the Computer & Communication Industry Association (CCIA) Europe said in a statement on 14 February 2024. The tech lobby group said the draft report, which will face a vote in the European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee on 15 February 2024, would turn the GDPR's cross-border procedure into an ‘adversarial’ one, which will ‘only lead to an increase in abusive complaints and further slow down already lengthy procedures.’ The full press release is below.

Law360: The EU's highest court on 29 July 2024 upheld the bloc's law requiring tax advisers to report potentially aggressive cross-border tax arrangements, rejecting a challenge from Belgian tax lawyers who said their country's implementation of the EU's DAC 6 law violated European law.

MLex: The EU is under mounting pressure to protect European businesses from a rise in redirected cheap Chinese imports as a result of US President Trump’s tariff war. Speeding up and simplifying the EU’s trade defence mechanisms seems to be the obvious solution. But the system is already under administrative strain, and experts are concerned that a faster or simpler regime could raise questions about fairness and may offer only limited protection for European companies anyway.

MLex: A ‘majority’ of publishers, tech companies and online advertisers told the European Commission that it's ‘premature’ to sign up to a voluntary ‘cookie pledge’ that would address consumers' ‘cookie fatigue’ over repetitive banners, a spokesperson for the EU executive said on 19 April 2024. The move follows rising uncertainty facing companies about EU competition and privacy Data Protection Authorities' (DPA) views on behavioural advertising.

A method of valuing companies calculated by dividing a company's enterprise value (market value of equity plus net debt of the company) by its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation. This measure relates short-term cash flow generation to market valuation.

Early Works Agreement

East-West Interconnector

Restructuring & Insolvency analysis: This was a judgment on two applications under CPR Part 18 in a petition to wind up a company on the just and equitable ground. The respondents to the applications objected, among others, on the ground that no matters could be said to be ‘in dispute’ because, so far, there was no defence to the petition. It was held that a matter could be ‘in dispute’ based on material other than pleadings. The majority of the CPR Part 18 requests were found to be reasonable and proportionate. Written by Nora Wannagat, Barrister at Tanfield Chambers.

Before an application may be presented to an employment tribunal to institute many types of proceedings, the early conciliation requirement obliges the prospective claimant to provide to Acas prescribed information about that matter, including whether or not he or she wishes to enter into conciliatory discussions with the prospective respondent.