Industrial action is on the rise throughout Europe; in this webinar we looked at the differences and similarities in the industrial action process across France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Poland and the UK, the potential legal remedies in each jurisdiction and the practical steps employers can take to keep the business running.
On 8 December 2022, the European Commission proposed a text amending Directive 2011/16/EU on administrative cooperation in the field of taxation. DAC8 provides, among other things, the following: changes to the existing DAC framework, rules on advance cross-border rulings for high-net-worth individuals, and a crypto-asset reporting framework for competent EU authorities.
On 24 October 2022, the Netherlands published an extensive draft proposal, including detailed commentary, for the implementation of the GloBE Model Rules in Dutch tax legislation. The Dutch Pillar 2 Proposal is presented as a stand-alone legislative act referred to as the “Minimum Tax Act 2024”, which would exist separate from the Dutch corporate income tax act. The Minimum Tax Act 2024 is largely based on the EU Pillar 2 Directive that was published on 22 December 2021 and further updated in subsequent months.
On 20 September 2022, the Dutch government released the budget proposals, which includes certain amendments to Dutch tax laws. At a high level, the impact of the Tax Plan 2023 on most corporate taxpayers will likely be limited. The more impactful measures that are announced by the Dutch government, such as the Dutch implementation of Pillar 2, require further consideration by the government and are expected in the course of next year and be effective the earliest at 1 January 2024. As a next step, the measures announced will be discussed in Parliament in the coming weeks and, when approved, most of the new rules will be implemented effective 1 January 2023.
On 24 May 2022, the Dutch Supreme Court passed judgment between, on one hand, the Royal Dutch Shell PLC and 15 of Shell’s in-house lawyers (“Shell”), and on the other hand, the Dutch Public Prosecution Service.1 The Supreme Court held that both Shell’s and the Public Prosecution Service’s complaints were inadmissible because the decision of the court of first instance should be considered as an ‘interim decision’ (in Dutch: ‘tussenbeschikking’), and interim decisions are not open to cassation. The Supreme Court took the opportunity to provide some insights in relation to the scope and application of legal professional privilege of in-house lawyers by way of obiter dictum.
Through the EU Directive on Restructuring and Insolvency of 20 June 2019 (EUR 2019/1023, “Directive”), the European Union has imposed an obligation on its member states to offer a more attractive and flexible restructuring scheme in their respective local law. The initial deadline to do so had been 17 July 2021. Only a handful of countries (most notably Germany and The Netherlands) had implemented the Directive within the initial deadline, whilst the other countries made use of the possibility to ask for a one year extension.
Sexually transgressive behavior in the workplace — until recently, it was taboo to talk about it. However, overnight, that taboo was broken.
The mutual recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters between the UK and the Netherlands used to be governed by the Brussels Recast Regulation. Today, post-Brexit, it is not an easy task to determine which rules apply. The key issue is whether the Convention between the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland providing for the Reciprocal Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments in Civil Matters dated 17 November 196711 revived. Nonetheless, a notable exception to the current uncertainty exists with respect to judgments that fall within the scope of the Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements dated 30 June 20052.
Baker McKenzie’s Sanctions Blog published the alert titled “Russia imposes a ban on foreign aircraft flights from 36 states” on 1 March 2022. Read the article via the link here. Please also visit our Sanctions Blog for the most recent updates.
On 21 February 2022, the Corporate Governance Code Monitoring Committee submitted a proposal to update the Dutch Corporate Governance Code (“Proposal””). The Proposal (currently open for consultation up to and including 17 April 2022) provides for updating the Dutch Corporate Governance Code (“Code”) in areas such as long-term value creation, the role of shareholders and diversity. It also contains proposals to amend provisions of the Code due to changes of the Dutch Civil Code, such as introducing a statutory cooling-off period and statutory rules on the remuneration policy and report. This overview briefly outlines the most important parts of the Proposal.