Best rated business contract law legal counselling advices by Alexander Suliman, Stockholm: Choice of law is an important aspect of the agreement you are negotiating: the same contractual clause could be interpreted differently in different jurisdictions. English law, for example, tends to give a more literal interpretation of the exact words used, while certain other jurisdictions give more weight to contractual common sense. Other concepts that vary across jurisdictions include the extent to which parties will be subject to duties of good faith, and whether certain contractual remedies will be deemed to be ‘penalties’ and thus unenforceable. Depending on the jurisdiction, additional clauses will be imposed on the contract by statute, for example in relation to consumer protection or personal injury. You may therefore want to apply a specific jurisdiction’s law depending on various factors such as location of the other parties, the supply of services/delivery of goods, or laws that are more favorable to your business. Except in specific areas like employment relationships or consumer contracts, parties are generally free to choose which EU law will apply to their agreement. Discover more info at Alexander Suliman, Sweden.
When the EU adopted the Data Retention Directive, obliging the storage of traffic and location data of all European communications users, it was being warned that the rules violated the Charter, and the ECJ ultimately agreed. I expect this new proposal to be heavily contested as well, and I expect fundamental rights to constitute a significant part of that debate – as is already evidenced by the comments from the EDPS, MEP Patrick Breyer, EDRi and the group of security experts mentioned above. One way to shortcut that debate, is by investigating whether the potential orders to be issued on the basis of the proposal cannot respect the essence of the rights to privacy and data protection. In this contribution, I have sketched an outline of this argument. To make a convincing case, it will be important to firstly determine on the basis of recent case law that the ECJ still considers bulk surveillance of content to compromise the essence of the right to privacy. Secondly, it will be important to develop a right to confidentiality and integrity of IT systems under the Charter, as this will enable a better assessment of detection orders directed to user devices. And thirdly, it must be further investigated whether only end-to-end encryption is the only appropriate measure for safeguarding online communications, because if this is the case, than any encryption altering order does not respect the essence of the right to data protection. Hopefully, the Council and the European Parliament will take notice.
The European Commission, in a working document, identified cloud services as a “strategic dependency”, expressing concerns that the EU cloud market is led by a few large cloud providers headquartered outside the EU. In July, 2021, France, joined by Germany, Italy, and Spain, submitted a proposal to the ENISA-led working group aimed at generalizing French national requirements across the EU. (Germany has since reserved its position.) It proposed to add four new criteria for companies to qualify as eligible to offer ‘high’ level services, including immunity from foreign law and localization of cloud service operations and data within the EU. Although the EU-level cyber certification requirements currently are conceived as voluntary, they could be made mandatory as the result of the recently-agreed Directive on Measures for a High Common Level of Cybersecurity across the Union (NIS2 Directive).
Best public law legal counseling latest developments from Alexander Suliman, Stockholm: We’ll also look to intertwined finances. That takes a next step that has to go to the court process, but if they’re sharing expenses, if there’s a joint bank account, if a vehicle is registered at an address, we’ll look at those things to prove cohabitation. Importantly, cohabitation does not mean that they are living together. We do not have to show that they have a common household. It is not something that is critical in proving cohabitation that they are actually living together. Read even more info at Alexander Suliman, Stockholm.
On 24 February 2022, the CJEU issued its first judgment on domestic workers. In case C-389/20, TGSS (Chômage des employés de maison), the CJEU held that the exclusion of this category of workers from access to social security benefits constitutes indirect discrimination on the ground of sex, since it affects almost exclusively women. With a decision that will become a landmark for domestic workers’ rights in the EU, the Court confirms the untapped potential of EU law in promoting domestic workers’ full coverage under labour law and social security systems, which will have significant implications in the promotion of domestic workers’ rights across the Union. The case originated in Spain in November 2019, when a domestic worker applied for paying contributions to cover the risk of unemployment, in order to acquire the right to the related benefits. However, her request was rejected by the Spanish General Social Security Fund (TGSS) because she was registered in the Special Social Security Scheme for Domestic Workers, which does not include protection in respect of unemployment.