In response to the “MeToo” movement, Taiwan’s Government amended the Act of Gender Equality in Employment (AGEE) on 31 July 2023. The new AGEE amendments will take effect on 8 March 2024.
The recent high-profile sexual harassment cases in Taiwan have raised concerns and triggered discussions about the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace. In fact, among the various types of employee misconduct, sexual harassment has been mostly addressed in Taiwanese law. Taiwan’s Occupational Safety and Health Act and the Act of Gender Equality in Employment both require employers to provide a friendly and safe working environment, and provide detailed regulations for the process of investigations of sexual harassment complaints.
Taiwan and the US have concluded negotiations on five issues since the announcement of the Taiwan-US 21st Century Trade Initiative’s launch in June 2022, including trade facilitation, good manufacturing practices, domestic regulations for service industries, anti-corruption, and small and medium-sized enterprises. This is a key step towards the completion of the Taiwan-US FTA using the building block approach. The first agreement is expected to be signed in the next few weeks.
Due to an increase in cases of personal data breaches in recent years with incidents affecting large numbers of data subjects, critics have raised concerns about the existing penalties being too lenient to halt the frequent data breaches. In a high-profile case involving the secondary use of national health insurance data, the Taiwan Constitutional Court ruled in August 2022 that the lack of independent data protection authority is against the Constitution and requested the establishment of the relevant legal system within three years. The Taiwan Legislative Yuan passed the Amendment to the Personal Data Protection Act on 16 May 2023 to address these concerns.
Our Asia Pacific Employment & Compensation team is pleased to share our quarterly update, which highlights key employment law changes across the Asia Pacific region in the first quarter of 2023.
Baker McKenzie’s Sanctions Blog published the alert titled Taiwan expands the list of export control items to Russia and Belarus on 13 January 2023. Read the article via the link here. Please also visit our Sanctions Blog for the most recent updates.
On 30 August 2022, the Indonesian House of Representatives agreed to pass a law ratifying the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the largest regional free trade agreement outside the World Trade Organization — involving 10 ASEAN countries and five non-ASEAN countries, i.e., China, New Zealand, Australia, Japan and South Korea. With the passing of this law, which still requires promulgation by the President, RCEP is set to come into force for Indonesia, possibly before the end of the year.
The first draft, released on 2 March 2022, is the authority’s first comprehensive overview of competition issues specific to the digital economy and its enforcement position and policy direction. This update was published as part of our quarterly newsletter, Asia Pacific Competition Highlights.
Baker McKenzie’s Sanctions Blog published the alert titled Taiwan issues list of Russia-related export controls on 8 April 2022. Read the article via the link here. Please also visit our Sanctions Blog for the most recent updates.
Baker McKenzie’s Sanctions Blog published the alert titled Taiwan tightens trade with Russia on 12 March 2022. Read the article via the link here. Please also visit our Sanctions Blog for the most recent updates.