The Platform on Sustainable Finance—an advisory body to the European Commission—has published an independent report on streamlining sustainable finance for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The report builds on the experience with the implementation of the sustainability guarantee under the InvestEU programme, and suggests developing a voluntary, streamlined approach—the SME sustainable finance standard—to help SMEs and their lenders or financiers voluntarily demonstrate SMEs’ environmental sustainability performance.

The technological solution to facilitate the administration of a wrap account, allowing a series of investments in different tax wrappers to access a wide range of collective investment funds, providing a simple presentation to both adviser and customer.

MLex: European online marketplaces fear the draft European Product Act could make them frontline product-compliance enforcers, raising costs and legal exposure through new checks before products are listed. Platforms and industry groups say the measure would shift strict product liability onto marketplaces, treating them as actual traders and thereby completely bypassing the liability protections in the EU's e-commerce rules.

MLex: Social media companies face two possible restrictions on the way they can process data for personalised ads if judges follow a legal opinion issued for the EU’s top court on 25 April 2024. In a non-binding opinion for the Court of Justice in a case involving Meta Platforms and Austrian privacy campaigner Max Schrems, Advocate General Athanasios Rantos recommended a finding that under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (EU GDPR), firms such as Meta cannot process data for personalised advertising indefinitely, and that the fact of information being public does not mean it can be processed for ad targeting.

MLex: Online platforms will see age assurance take center stage in EU Digital Services Act guidance, a senior commission official said today. The draft guidelines will be published in the coming weeks for public consultation and will include a wide range of recommendations for the different platforms regulated under the DSA, said Martin Harris Hess, head of the protection of minors unit in the European Commission.

Employment analysis: This year, the usual late May bank holiday has been moved forward to Thursday 2 June 2022, and an additional one-off bank holiday has been created for Friday 3 June 2022. Since the announcement of the extra bank holiday to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee on 3 June, employees have been planning how to spend their bonus extra-long weekend. However, the legal position is not that straightforward. Some employees may find that they won’t be getting an extra day off at all. Adam Brett, Partner, and Amy Cooper, associate at Lewis Silkin look at who will get the day off and some of the implications.

Family analysis: Discussing the judgment in Re W, Maud Davis, partner at TV Edwards LLP, says it is clear that practitioners and the courts have to treat the issue of separate representation as part of the growing recognition of children’s autonomy.

The need for a licence to play music—copyright-protected works Copyright protects certain types of works from unauthorised (largely commercial) exploitation. When dealing with playing music in a place of business, the following types of copyright-protected works are relevant: • music (musical works) • lyrics of songs (literary works) • recordings of songs or music (sound recordings) • radio or television (TV) broadcasts The owner of the copyright in any of the above works can control their commercial exploitation by either preventing or charging (licensing) third parties for permission to play or perform them in public. Music A ‘musical work’ is a ‘work consisting of music, exclusive of any words or action intended to be sung, spoken or performed with the music’. For a work to attract musical copyright protection, there are three essential ingredients: • it must consist of ‘music’. Music is distinguished from ‘mere noise’ as being a combination of sounds for listening to and which produces effects of some kind on the listener’s emotions and intellect. A musical work also comprises all those

Family analysis: Discussing the Court of Appeal’s judgment in Owens v Owens, Nigel Shepherd, national head of family law at Mills & Reeve, says that until we get reform by introducing no fault divorce, practitioners have no choice but to apply the current law.

Submissions made by the defendant or their representative as part of the sentencing process, presenting the information or evidence which they rely on to mitigate their role or involvement in the offence or their personal circumstances so that the judge can take this into account in sentencing.

Dispute Resolution analysis: The Court of Appeal refused a professional consultant’s appeal against a refusal to strike out and/or grant summary judgment against a pleading which advanced a case against that professional pleaded by way of sampling and extrapolation. Written by John Denis-Smith, barrister at 39 Essex Chambers.

Scope of Practice Note This Practice Note provides a set of worked examples for pleading: • particulars of claim • defence • reply based on a hypothetical claim arising out of a contract for the sale and delivery of blinds in a business-to-business scenario. Given the nature of the claim, it is not one to which the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 applies (on which, see Practice Note: Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998). These worked examples are not designed to be used as Precedents. They do not include all possible claims or defences that might be available in the hypothetical scenario and are not intended to be ‘the perfect pleading’. Rather, they are intended to be read in conjunction with the generic statement of case Precedents linked to below and provide practical examples of how a hypothetical scenario might look when pleaded in the sequence of particulars of claim, defence and then reply so as to assist practitioners in understanding how factual and legal information should