On January 19, 2021, the US Commerce Department published an interim final rule (“Interim Rule”) to implement Executive Order 13873, “Securing the Information and Communications Technology and Services (“ICTS”) Supply Chain.” The Interim Rule was issued following the public comment period’s closure on January 10, 2021 on the proposed rules issued on November 27, 2019.
On 30 June 2021, Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted a new payment services law. The law seeks to: (i) remove certain regulatory barriers for entering the Ukrainian payment services market, and (ii) implement certain European Union laws applicable to the payment services, such as Directive 2015/2366 (PSD2) and Directive 2009/110/EC (Second E-Money Directive). The law came into force on 1 August 2021 and provides the stakeholders with 12 months to prepare for the launch of the new payment services market. The law may affect many business models in payment services business which were previously essentially unregulated.
Our quarterly “Working with Unions” bulletin is designed to keep employers updated with key cases and legal developments affecting trade unions and employee representative bodies. Our latest bulletin covers the period of April to June 2021 and includes an interesting Central Arbitration Committee decision considering the effect of Brexit on UK European Works Councils and a decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal reading down section 146 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 to give workers protection from detriment for taking industrial action.
On 5 August 2021, the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (“OFSI“) imposed a GBP 50,000 penalty on TransferGo Limited (“TransferGo“), a UK FinTech company, for breaching UK sanctions when it issued instructions to make payments to accounts held at the Russian National Commercial Bank (“RNCB“), a designated party.
Following recent events in Afghanistan, on 18 August 2021 the ECJU announced that open general export licences in five categories, including dual-use items, may no longer be used where the permitted destination is Afghanistan.
On 1 July 2021, President Putin signed one of the most significant bills of 2021 in Russia and in doing so turned Russian IT regulation on its head. The “Landing Law”, which regulates the activity of foreign IT entities in Russia, marks a new trend in the regulation of information technology in Russia.
The main development is that under the new law foreign information technology companies will be required to establish a physical presence in Russia.
On August 9, 2021, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada significantly escalated sanctions against Belarus in a multilateral effort to put pressure on the current Lukashenko regime. These sanctions were announced on the first anniversary of the fraudulent elections held in Belarus on August 9, 2020 and follow a series of previous measures against Belarus, including most recently the coordinated measures between the UK, US, Canada and the EU in June (see our previous blog post here) and the sectoral sanctions also introduced by the EU in June (see our previous blog post here).
A series of briefings that take a “bite-size” look at international trends in different jurisdictions, drawing on Baker McKenzie’s expert financial services practitioners.
On 30 July 2021, the Official Journal of the European Union published the Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2021/1248 of 29 of July 2021, as regards measures on good distribution practice for veterinary medicinal products in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2019/6 of the European Parliament and of the Council (“Implementing Regulation”). The Implementing Regulation applies to holders of manufacturing authorizations performing wholesale distribution of veterinary medicinal products covered by that manufacturing authorization, and to holders of a wholesale distribution authorization, including those established or operating under specific customs regimes, such as free zones or customs warehouses.
The Spanish association of pharmaceutical companies (“Farmaindustria”) has updated the Code of Good Practice for the Pharmaceutical Industry (“Code”), which came into force last 1 January 2021. This amendment is mainly aimed to introduce to section 14.2 of the Code a new definition and regulation for non-interventional studies in accordance with the provisions of the new Royal Decree 957/2020, of 3 November, which regulates non-interventional studies with medicines for human use (“RD 957/2020”). The RD 957/2020 came into force last 2 January 2021.