Insights

Brussels – May 22, 2024: Senior antitrust regulators from the European Commission, the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority, and the U.S. Department of Justice will join industry and academic leaders for in-depth discussions at the Crowell & Moring and King's College London Sixth Annual EU Competition Law Conference on June 11 at TheMerode in Brussels.

Brussels and Doha – April 1, 2024: The Legal 500 Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA) 2024 edition has recognized 16 practice areas and 11 lawyers in Crowell & Moring’s Brussels and Doha offices. The 11 individual lawyers received 18 total rankings across the 16 different practice areas.

Washington – January 2, 2020: Crowell & Moring elected eight lawyers to the firm’s partnership, effective January 1, 2020. The firm also promoted seven attorneys to the position of senior counsel, and 26 associates to the position of counsel. The new partners have been promoted from within the ranks of the firm’s Washington, Los Angeles, and San Francisco offices. The new partners have been promoted from across offices and practice groups, including White Collar & Regulatory Enforcement, Health Care, International Trade, Intellectual Property, Privacy & Cybersecurity, Government Contracts, Litigation, and Antitrust.

The amount of litigation regarding environmental and climate change issues is, perhaps unsurprisingly, growing worldwide.[1] A significant portion of that litigation relates to so-called ‘greenwashing’, ‘climate-washing’ or ‘social-washing’ disputes. In other words, legal cases where people or organisations (often NGOs and consumer groups) accuse companies, banks, financial institutions or others, of making untrue statements. They argue these companies or financial institutions are pretending their products, services or operations are more environmentally-friendly, sustainable, or ethically ‘good’ for society – than is really the case. Perhaps more interestingly, of all the litigation in the environmental and climate change space – complainants bringing greenwashing and social washing cases have, according to some of these reports, statistically the most chance of winning. So, in a nutshell, not only is greenwashing and social washing litigation on the rise, companies and financial institutions are most likely to lose cases in this area.

More than a year ago, the EU Batteries Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2023/1542) entered into force.  In approximately one year’s time, the EU Batteries Regulation is set to repeal the 2006 Batteries Directive (Directive 2006/66/EC), with some exceptions. During the 2024 summer, a number of the new requirements under the EU Batteries Regulation have begun to apply.  With these points in mind, it is an opportune time to take stock of the new requirements being phased-in under the EU Batteries Regulation, consider the most recent requirements which begun to apply last month (August 2024), and assess the significant, and growing, impact the EU Batteries Regulation is having more generally.

Over the 2024 summer, new EU rules entered into force regarding unsold consumer products under the new ESPR (i.e. the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation – Regulation (EU) 2024/1781).  The legal obligations themselves are relatively concise and short in number and therefore perhaps easy to overlook.  However, companies selling or supplying consumer products in the EU/EEA – particularly companies in the clothing, footwear, apparel, textile and retail sectors – should beware and not underestimate their importance or impact.

The new Companies and Associations Code has been approved by the Belgian Parliament on February 28, 2019. This Code replaces the current Companies Code as well as the Law on Associations and Foundations and the Law on Professional Associations. It extensively rewrites the rules regulating companies, associations, and foundations.

An inescapable part of marketing your (non-food) products consists of managing the risks caused by defective and/or non-compliant products. To deal with the legal aspect of this risk, economic operators must take measures prior to putting their products on the market as well as once the product has been commercialized.

The European Regulation on “the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data” (also known as the "GDPR") will be applicable in all EU Member States from May 25, 2018.