Insights

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.

AI is currently attracting a lot of attention, and not only for the stunning pace at which we have embraced AI for writing office speeches, shopping lists or mathematical formulas, or for creating illustrations or improving the visuals of slide shows. Lawyers have also started paying attention to AI, with analyses of copyright infringements in input and output, anti-competitive concerted behavior (such as price fixing) or violations of personality and privacy rights with deep fakes imitating celebrities’ images or voices.

On February 28, 2023, the European Data Protection Board (“EDPB”) adopted its Opinion 5/2023 (the “Opinion”) on the draft adequacy decision of the European Commission regarding the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (“DPF”). The DPF aims to ensure that personal data transferred from the European Union to the U.S. receives an adequate level of protection. The framework is based on the principles of transparency, accountability, and oversight, and it includes safeguards to protect the data privacy rights of individuals.

In a judgment of August 1, 2022, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) provided further guidance on two important aspects of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (CJEU C-184/20). In summary, the CJEU held that, first, for a national law that imposes a legal obligation to process personal data to be able to constitute a legal basis for processing, it needs to be lawful, meaning that it must meet an objective of public interest and be proportionate to the legitimate aim pursued, and second, that non-sensitive data that are liable to reveal sensitive personal data need to be protected by the strengthened protection regime for processing of special categories of personal data.

Silicon Legal Strategy and Crowell & Moring are pleased to present discussions in San Francisco and Los Angeles on a number of important data privacy issues affecting companies in California. The events will feature experienced privacy lawyers from the firms’ offices in California, New York, Washington, DC, and Brussels. The discussions in both cities will be followed by receptions. 

We have now seen the ICO bare its teeth with huge proposed fines for GDPR breaches. In this session, we will be hosting a panel discussion on practical issues around GDPR one year (and a bit) on, what organisations need to be doing to avoid missteps, and the likely consequences if they get it wrong.

On May 25, 2019, we will celebrate the first birthday of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). We are proud to invite you to our seminar with special guest speaker Mr. David Stevens, the newly appointed Chairman of the Belgian Data Protection Authority, who will shed light on the implementation of the GDPR from the point of view of the Authority.

In Collaboration with IBJ/IJE More than 3 years after the go-live of the GDPR, we have a good view on how both the Belgian data protection authority (DPA) and the Belgian courts tackle HR issues from a GDPR point of view.