On 17 August 2023, the Ministry of Health published the draft decree, and related technical regulations, on the “Transparent Healthcare” public register and launched a public consultation to gather comments and contributions from stakeholders, including manufacturers of health products, healthcare professionals and organizations.
The European Commission has published practical advice in the form of recommendations explaining that the EU Taxonomy can be used not only to disclose taxonomy-aligned activities and capital expenditures, but to define transition targets and to identify the finance needed to meet them. In this way, the Commission considers that the EU Taxonomy can be used as “forward-looking tool using its criteria as reference points for setting targets.”
In this latest instalment of our Demystifying ESG series, besides considering the Commission’s recommendations generally, we’ll discuss how this “tool” will work in practice across a range of economic activities and how it can be used to compare current with planned environmental performance, as well as a communication tool to articulate transition finance needs.
On 12 September 2023, the President of Ukraine signed Law No. 5431 “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine to Improve the Activities of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine” (“Law”), which launched a reform of Ukrainian competition law. The Law will enter into force on 1 January 2024.
The Law was developed together with competition law experts from the EU in line with the European Union-Ukraine Association Agreement. Adopting and implementing the Law is the first stage of the competition law reform, aimed at strengthening the powers of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMC) and bringing Ukrainian competition law and the AMC’s activities closer to the legal system of the European Union.
On 21 July 2023 the Ministry of Health published on its website new guidelines on the advertising of over-the-counter (OTC) and prescription-free medicinal product (SOP).
According to Article 40.1 of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the national supervisory authorities in the European Economic Area shall “encourage the drawing up of codes of conduct intended to contribute to the proper application” of the GDPR. A prerequisite for codes of conduct to be prepared by Swedish associations and bodies, which represent categories of personal data controllers or processors, is that the Swedish Data Protection Authority (IMY), pursuant to Art. 41 GDPR, has to establish the requirements that will apply to their accreditation bodies, the so-called supervisory bodies, which will be responsible in monitoring compliance with the code of conduct by the controllers or processors that undertake to apply it.
On 19 September 2023, the EU Commission opened a consultation on its BEFIT Directive, which was published the previous week. BEFIT is the acronym for Business in Europe: Framework for Income Taxation. The initiative, widely considered to replace the EU Commission’s Consolidated Common Corporate Tax Base, will aim to introduce a common set of rules for groups of companies and head offices, based in the EU, to determine their taxable base. The BEFIT proposal could also apply to non-EU-headquartered groups.
Baker McKenzie’s Sanctions Blog published the alert titled US issues new sanctions designations related to Russia and Iranian drones, signaling continuously increasing risks on 21 September 2023. 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 Wagner is proscribed by the UK government on 15 September 2023. Read the article via the link here. Please also visit our Sanctions Blog for the most recent updates.
The UK government published an evaluation report for the six pilot initiatives on an ‘Ecosystem of Trust’ (“EoT”) on 29 August 2023, which was first set out in the government’s 2025 UK Border strategy. Aimed at using technology to create the so called EoT around the border, the UK proposed an automated assurance and reliability model that could allow a simplification of the current customs and border processes. Such an ecosystem would be built on three pillars: technological capabilities, real time data and trusted relationships.
The UK government has released its final plans for the new Border Target Operating Model (“the Model”). The Model was initially set for implementation from October this year and has now been delayed to January 2024. The UK Government has agreed to this delay of three months following input from public consultation from the private sector and stakeholders.