News

In crisis situations, companies are regularly faced with the need to reduce costs. This is often accompanied by the restriction of certain business activities or even the closure of certain unproductive operating units; in other words, the question inevitably arises as to whether and to what extent notices of termination have to be given. On the other hand, there is an interest in retaining valuable employees and their know-how in the company.

The EU Directive 2019/882 (“European Accessibility Act”—EAA) has been in effect since 27 June 2019. The objective of the EAA is to standardise national legal and administrative requirements on accessibility requirements for certain products and services. Different regulations that have thus far created obstacles for the free circulation of accessible services are to be eliminated or prevented. In view of the high demand, an environment with more accessible products and services is meant to facilitate a more inclusive society and support an independent life for the people affected.

All EU Member States are required to implement the provisions of this Directive in a binding manner into national law at the latest by 28 June 2025.

The foundation is increasingly a central element in succession planning, particularly in the organisation of corporate groups and the transfer of assets. Not only can it play a key role in securing the inheritance and the company structure, but also in risk minimisation and tax optimisation.

The foundation is said to have miraculous effects in the organisation of corporate groups, especially when they are owner-managed. However, without the judgment of professional advice, a promising project can quickly end in a fiasco.

On 13 December 2024, the new Regulation (EU) 2023/988 of the European Parliament and of the Council on General Product Safety (“GPSR”) will come into force. This regulation replaces the more than 20-year-old General Product Safety Directive (GPSD) and brings with it numerous innovations. The GPSR applies directly in all Member States of the European Union.

An employer who is concerned that an employee will compete with them after leaving the company will consider agreeing to a post-contractual non-competition clause.

For example, such a clause aims to prevent the employee from working as an employee for a competitor after the end of the employment relationship or from setting up a rival business of their own.

The requirements that the legal systems of the individual states place on the agreement, the form, and the cancellation of post-contractual non-competition clauses with employees vary greatly.

In May 2023, Directive (EU) 2023/970 of the European Parliament and of the Council on strengthening the application of the principle of equal pay for men and women for equal work or work of equal value through pay transparency and enforcement mechanisms was adopted, and Member States are required to implement this di-rective into national law by 07/06/2026.

On 29 December 2023, the National People's Congress (the legislature of the People's Republic of China) made significant amendments to the criminal law.

This change in the law, which has meanwhile come into force, is in line with the central government's promise to sharpen the focus on lawful conduct by private companies in China and to fight corruption with all severity.

In recent months, the EU Parliament has passed a large number of ESG-related (ESG: Environmental, Social and Governance) legislative proposals. Given the speed and variety of new laws, it is important for entrepreneurs and organisations to stay informed about the latest developments in ESG legislation. Below we provide an overview of the current ESG regulatory requirements in the package of measures relating to the Green Deal and explain what companies should consider in the near future.

Since the beginning of 2022, a large number of data protection laws have been enacted in China. Since there was initially a lack of necessary concreteness and harmonisation of these laws, their specific scope and significance was difficult to estimate for foreign enterprises in China. In 2023 and 2024, there has been a large number of legal amendments and significant concretisation in data protection law.

The beginning of the year saw significant changes to corporate law. In Germany, a significant reform came into force with the Act on the Modernization of Partnership Law (MoPeG). In Austria, the catalog of company forms was expanded to include the 'flexible corporation', which has offered new opportunities for business activities since 1 January 2024. China will introduce comprehensive changes to company law from July 1, 2024, which will affect foreign investors and management in particular. There are also important developments in France, Italy, Slovakia and Turkey, which will each introduce new legal requirements and changes to the corporate environment.

Today, more and more business activities and professional activities are shifting to the digital world. The coronavirus pandemic has contributed significantly to this trend, as it has forced us to adapt to new realities. This situation, as well as the efficiency and convenience of remote work, has created a new working reality, which in turn brings new risks of which many of us were previously unaware. We are talking about cybercrime, which companies in particular can suffer.

With telemedicine / remote treatment, healthcare medical services are provided by means of audiovisual communication technologies over geographical or temporal distances. Telemedicine is diverse and can be provided both in regional rural care or across countries as well as in the specialised care of rare diseases or by specialists that are not available everywhere. Especially after the coronavirus pandemic, telemedicine has increased in importance.

In our rapidly evolving global labour landscape, remote work has become a central theme and a defining feature of the modern workforce. This newsletter looks at the subtleties of cross-border remote working from a tax perspective and examines the complex considerations that need to be borne in mind by both employers and employees. We address the tax implications of cross-border work and cover topics such as tax residency, double taxation agreements, permanent establishments and income tax deduction obligations.

Most countries of the European Union have already transposed Directive (EU) 2019/1937 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2019 on the protection of persons who report breaches of Union law within their legal systems. There are some legal differences in how the Whistleblower Directive has been transposed into the various laws.

In the case of M&A transactions, all participants strive for a quick closing and thus legal certainty in the future. Previously, an M&A transaction was checked ex ante by the responsible competition authorities if certain turnover thresholds were exceeded to determine whether the project would create or strengthen a dominant position. However, this legal certainty is now lost due to the most recent practice and case law of the European Court of Justice (hereinafter referred to as “ECJ”), since, even if the turnover thresholds are not met, there is the possibility of an ex post content review and, if necessary, a reversal obligation.

The decision to purchase a holiday home is often made on a wave of emotion, with the exuberance of great memories of a beautiful summer holiday. But however enthusiastic you are about the beauty of your home and its area, it is important to also keep an eye on the costs in order to avoid unpleasant surprises later on leading to “buyer’s remorse”. These start with the ancillary costs of the actual purchase and can continue until the inheritance tax in the case of an inheritance.

In the following article, we review the costs you need to take into account for Turkey as they occur on the purchase of the property, during its ongoing use, on its sale or transfer as a gift, or even in the event of inheritance.

The decision to purchase a holiday home is often made on a wave of emotion, with the exuberance of great memories of a beautiful summer holiday. But however enthusiastic you are about the beauty of your home and its area, it is important to also keep an eye on the costs in order to avoid unpleasant surprises later on leading to “buyer’s remorse”. These start with the ancillary costs of the actual purchase and can continue until the inheritance tax in the case of an inheritance.

In the following article, we review the costs you need to take into account for Italy as they occur on the purchase of the property, during its ongoing use, on its sale or transfer as a gift, or even in the event of inheritance.

“Whistleblowing” describes the uncovering of abuses, such as corruption, money laundering, and environmental hazards, by whistleblowers who have acquired insider knowledge due to their professional activity. Whistleblowers must usually accept serious personal or professional disadvantages as a result of their reports.

To protect whistleblowers, the EU already issued the Whistleblowing Directive in 2019. This directive stipulates that enterprises have the obligation to establish channels and procedures to enable reports of abuses and breaches of the law.

On 12 January 2023 the Regulation (EU) 2022/2560 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 December 2022 on foreign subsidies distorting the internal market (hereinafter: the “FSR Regulation”) has entered into force.

The FSR Regulation, which will apply from 12 July 2023, equips the European Commission (hereinafter: the “Commission”) with new tools preventing distortion in competition of the internal (EU) market resulting from “foreign subsidies” meaning subsidies granted by the non-EU states to the entities operating on the internal market.

With a judgment from 2019, the ECJ had clearly set the direction: From the Working Hours Directive in conjunction with Art. 31 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFR), there is the obligation of the Member States to ensure that employers introduce an “objective, reliable and accessible system that can be used to measure the daily working hours worked by employees”; this follows from the right of employees to effective health protection and compliance with the legally prescribed (weekly and daily) maximum working hours. However, the ECJ had not set a specific deadline for the Member States.

Over three full years, the requirements of the ECJ then remained without any significant practical consequences, with a few exceptions that we will present below on a country-specific basis. And it was probably generally assumed that legislative intervention would be required for the practical implementation of the judgment. However, the German Federal Labour Court has now taken the ball directly and formulated directly from existing law specific obligations incumbent on the employer even without legislative measures.

The applicable e-commerce policy is over 20 years old. That is why the European Union launched a regulatory package for online platforms a few years ago.

In Germany, the draft of the Whistleblower Protection Act was passed by the Bundesrat on May 12, 2023, after the establishment of a mediation committee, and will come into force in June 2023.

Working from home, New Work, flexibility, self-organisation, trust-based working hours. These (and other) terms describe what is no longer a vision of the future or a mere phenomenon. Day-to-day working life has fundamentally changed in the last two and a half years at the latest since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, which acted as a catalyst in this respect.

The development and commercialisation of drones is making relentless progress. Due to the wide range of applications and the rapid technical advances, unmanned aircraft – or “UAS” (=Unmanned Aircraft System) for short – are predicted to be a promising future.

Based on its wording, German law only provides for the recording of working hours in certain cases. However, the Federal Labour Court (decision of 13/09/2022) has decided that there is a general obligation to record working hours (i.e. start and end of daily working hours and thus their duration including overtime). In the absence of express legal standardisation of such an obligation, the court derives this from an “EU law-compliant interpretation” of § 3 para. 2 no. 1 ArbSchG (Arbeitsschutzgesetz [Occupational Health and Safety Act]).

In the first half of 2022, the Corona Virus broke out again in many places in China. From early March to early June, the infection numbers in Shanghai had also developed rapidly. For this reason, massive lockdown measures were issued by the local government, which resulted in the closure of almost all companies in Shanghai. After the lockdown was released, general support policies have now been introduced in various regions, including Shanghai, which include rent reduction/exemption measures for locally based companies.

In case of a hacking attack, unauthorised attackers attempt to access external PCs, notebooks, smartphones, tablets or even entire corporate networks. Since the frequency of such attacks has increased massively in Europe over the past year, in this article we look at the successful hacker attack from the outside, which encrypts the affected systems in such a way that the company can no longer access its system at all.

The European Commission’s Vertical Block Exemption Regulation (“VBER”), which was previously potentially applicable to distribution, whereby agreements between manufacturers or suppliers and retailers are exempt from the ban on cartels, ceased to be in force on 31/05/2022, because the original period of validity of 12 years was reached.
These new versions bring some changes which relax requirements compared to the previous legal situation, but also tighten requirements, which primarily take into account the area of tension between online/offline sales.

We had a visit from the founders of Eskapadia, freifeuer, NeoTaste und peerOS! These four highly interesting start-ups belong to Batch # 1 of the Osnabrück-based start-up accelerator SmartCityHouse. Schindhelm Osnabrück is also part of the SmartCityHouse’s advisor team.

Vorlage des Niedersächsischen Finanzgerichts an das Bundesverfassungsgericht

Cryptocurrency, big data, artificial intelligence, data theft, cloud, virtual, augmented, or mixed reality, cyber warfare, telemedicine, social media, autonomous driving, Industry 4.0, Criminal Law 4.0, NFTs – these are not the only issues that are bringing about the era of the fourth so-called digital revolution. Each of these digital changes is bringing new challenges to all facets of society – the link between law and technology is one of the biggest. An example that illustrates the special relationship between legal and digital technologies very well are NFTs (non-fungible tokens).

On May 2, 2022, an announcement was published by the relevant authority in Shanghai regarding the requirements and conditions that companies in Shanghai must meet in order to resume work and production under the current lockdown.

On April 28 of 2022, Shanghai Human Resources and Social Security Bureau – in coordination with Shanghai High People's Court – has issued regulation on handling labor disputes involving epidemics. This relates first and foremost to the regulation of salary payments during the continuing lockdown in Shanghai.

The "current turning point" in connection with the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine has not only a political but also perhaps an even greater economic dimension. The sharp rise in the price of raw materials and energy has led to a dramatic increase in costs for companies. The interruption of supply chains often causes production downtimes in industry. Despite all the harmonisation of laws that has taken place in the last 20 to 30 years, especially in the European legal sphere, this issue has remained untouched by efforts at legal standardisation. The reason for this was apparently a lack of topicality. Therefore, with this article, we provide an overview of how this topic is handled legally with regard to three key questions in the respective countries of our partner law firms.

If you want to help on a long term basis, you should think about founding an association. The legal hurdles for this can be overcome and the legal form has the advantage that receipts can be issued to donors if the association is non-profit. Finally, no significant start-up capital is required for founding an association.

In Germany, the regulations for private and commercial use of drones can be found in Section 5a “Operation of unmanned aircraft” of the Air Transport Regulations, more precisely in Sections 21 a et seq. of the LuftVO (Luftverkehrs-Ordnung [Air Traffic Regulations]). Due to the priority of application of EU regulations, the LuftVO was adapted to EU law in the relevant areas from July 2021. In addition, the EU Drone Regulation 2019/947 applies in all other points.

Already in 2020, the European Commission presented the draft for a new EU regulation on a single market for digital services, through which the latest developments in the field of digital services are to be incorporated and regulated at EU level. The proposal aims at better protection of consumer rights in the digital environment and at the joint internal market-related enforcement potential of the EU Member States.

Measures against computer piracy are regulated at two levels, a civil and a criminal level. However, the regulations are in the same law: the German Copyright Act. On the one hand, the unauthorised exploitation of copyrighted works, e.g., by copying or making available for download, constitutes a copyright infringement, which can be given a formal warning in accordance with § 97 para. 1 UrhG (Urhebergesetz [Copyright Act]).

Under German law, the right to adjust the contractual relationship up to and including withdrawal from the contract as a whole follows the principles developed for cessation of the basis of the contract. The basis of the transaction is, roughly speaking, the mutually recognisable ideas of motives, conditions and circumstances that existed at the time of conclusion of the contract. According to the principle that contracts must be fulfilled (pacta sunt servanda), such adjustments or terminations of contractual relationships can only be considered in absolutely exceptional cases.

From 1 January 2022, foreign nationals will no longer enjoy a general tax exemption for allowances for housing costs, language courses and education costs for children.

If a company receives an unlawful review, there is the possibility of initiating legal action against the person who has written or published the review and/or against the operator of the review platform. In the past, entrepreneurs have also increasingly taken successful legal action against illegal reviews, which were published on review platforms such as Google and Jameda, and were able to achieve, among other things, the deletion of the illegal reviews.

ECJ, judgment of 16.07.2020 C-311/18 ("Schrems II")

Data transfers from the EU to the US have always been a difficult process from a legal point of view. The ECJ has now struck down a data privacy pack used to establish an adequate level of data protection – the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Shield.

Currently, we only have one dominating topic – COVID-19 and its global spread. In that respect, many questions of employers and employers with respect to the protection of personal data arise. Please find our summary of the FAQs below.

Q&A on Labor Issues which may arise during the New Corona Virus epidemic prevention and control period.

On 01.01.2020 the new location of Schindhelm Rechtsanwaltsgesellschaft mbH has opened its doors in Frankfurt. The head of the new office in the German commercial metropolis is Schindhelm counsel and partner Dr. Karolin Nelles LL.M.

State and corporate compliance obligations to combat money laundering and terrorist financing remain an utmost priority for EU member states. Companies (“legal entities”) have therefore been obliged to disclose their “beneficial owners”, among other things, for quite some time. In Austria, a separate database - the “Beneficial Owners Register” - was set up for this purpose. In course of the implementation of the 5th EU Money Laundering Directive, further tightening measures have now been adopted.

According to Sec. 1118 ABGB (Austrian Civil Code), the lessor can terminate a lease unilaterally prematurely if the lessee makes a “considerably detrimental use” of the leased object. The scope and content of these legal provisions is a constant source of discussion. The mere performance of structural alterations by the lessee without the consent of the lessor does not in itself justify a good cause for the termination of the lease.

The new “Law on Trade Secrets” now implements the so-called “EU Trade Secrets Directive”. This adopts the European legal requirements for the protection of confidential know-how and secret business information. Moreover, the new legal provisions contain limitation periods and important procedural provisions for the protection of trade secrets in court proceedings.

A new law on company crises has significantly changed the rules applicable to limited liability companies in this respect Among other things, the liability of the company’s management was tightened. Furthermore, the tasks of the supervisory body were expanded. The reform’s true impact remains to be seen: Will there be a change in corporate culture or will there be an increase in corporate crises?

“Whistleblower” - people who point out violations of the law - will be protected even more in the future. This is the aim of a new law that came into force a few months ago. The new regulation adds to already existing provisions on the protection of whistleblowers in the employment relationship.

State aid is granted on the basis of various criteria. The region or the economic sector in which the investment is made is decisive, but also the strategic importance of the investment and the level of the investment volume. Investments in structurally weak regions receive higher subsidies than investments in industrial areas. For the award of grants, a distinction is made between six different regions.

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) recently ruled on the long-discussed question of whether and how website operators can integrate the Facebook Like button (so-called “social plug-in”) in accordance with data protection requirements.Th ECJ’s investigation results from a legal dispute between the Consumer Association of North Rhine-Westphalia and a subsidiary of Peek & Cloppenburg KG.

Schindhelm held a workshop on Thursday, November 7th, 2019 on the topic "Investment in Germany " organized and hosted by the German Centre for Industry and Trade Taicang.

Justified by the goal of solving legal disputes in a fast and economical manner without filing lawsuits and thus relieving the overloaded Turkish courts, a mediation procedure is implemented as a mandatory pre-condition for filing a lawsuit according to Turkish labour and commercial law.

It is the first anniversary of the GDPR. After a stressful finish to May 25, 2018 we were all excited to learn how the authorities would enforce this law which fundamentally changed the rules of data processing within the European Union.

Companies invest in know-how, from which there are important competitive advantages. Valuable information is the currency of the knowledge-based company. Maintaining confidentiality of business secrets is therefore a management instrument for competitiveness and research innovations. The loss of secrets can result in serious consequences, in particular, and generally can no longer be reversed.

At the end of 2017, in the legal case C-42/17, the ECJ issued a much publicised decision on the question of the primacy of application of Community Law.

The EU Directive on the regulation of confidential know-how and business information (know-how directive) was implemented in Hungary in July 2018.

Throughout Europe, approximately 80% of smartphones are equipped with the Google oper-ating system, Android...

Nestlé is a holder of a 3D EU trademark that corresponds to the "KitKat" bar marketed by it and protects its design.

With the large-scale reform of the company law from the year 2003, Italian legislators had simplified the regulations on the Governance of limited liability companies.

If a Gmbh makes payments after it becomes insolvent, the Managing Directors are personal-ly liable vis-à-vis the company, regardless of the internal allocation of responsibilities.

When a new shareholder list must be submitted in the commercial register due to a change, it must satisfy the requirements of § 40 I GmbHG [Limited Liability Companies Act] in the version of 23/06/2017 according to the decision of the BGH [Federal Supreme Court] dated 26/06/2018 – II ZB 12/16.

In view of the rapid growth of online trade, the Chinese government adopted the first e-commerce law on the comprehensive regulation of online business on 31/08/2018, which will enter into force on 01/01/2019.

Since May 2014, ownership rights for land and soil can only be acquired by natural and legal persons who have resided or been established in Bulgaria for longer than five years.

The presidential decree no. 32 issued on 12/09/2018 to protect the value of the Turkish cur-rency ("Decree") sets the limitation of foreign currency and foreign currency indexed contracts and stipulates that these contracts must be converted within 30 days into Turkish Lira (“TL”).

In the Czech Republic, as of 01/07/2019, employees should already be entitled to sick leave from the first day of their inability to work.

The residual debt discharge (RDD) was introduced in 2015 as an exception from the princip-le of general asset liability of the debtor in the insolvency code.

Due to the low unemployment rate in Slovakia, employers have recently been confronted with a lack of available workers.

In Romania, law no. 190/2018, and thus the national implementation of the GDPR, took effect as of 31/07/2018. In comparison with other EU countries, law no. 190/2018 was rather short.

In the business world, situations often arise in which the only existing managing director wants to leave the company.

In the budget planning for 2019, companies should prepare for the expected increase in Po-lish labour costs.

Online platforms and search engines dominate Internet trading. Unilateral business conditions, non-transparent algorithms and rankings are unfortunately not uncommon.

The electronic transmission of tenders in the award procedure is nothing new and was already standardised in the Federal Procurement Act 2006 both for the classical area and for the area of sector contractors.

As in the past, in the case of company sales, the seller has repeatedly neither paid salaries due nor paid social security contributions due for employees, the Bulgarian Commercial Code was amended accordingly by three successive amendments in December 2017, February and March 2018.

International business transactions often involve cross border transfer of personal data. This is the case for instance where the data is stored on a server located in a third country (a country outside the EEA) or a third country IT service provider has access to the data processed by a company within the EU. If personal data is to be transferred to a third country specific provisions of the GDPR will apply.

As of 25 May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) introduces harsh sanctions for data breaches with extended scope of applicability.Companies and other data processing entities become potential subjects not only to the data subjects’ claims for damages, the enforceability of which has been enhanced, but also to increased administrative fines to be imposed by supervisory authorities.

The General Regulation on Data Protection (GDPR) which will apply from 25th May 2018, introduces the position of the Data Protection Officer (DPO).The DPO shall be the contact person for and shall be involved in all data protection related issues of the given entity. The DPO is an organ within the company which liaises with the authority, the company and the data subjects.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) adopted by the EU Parliament in 2016 provides a higher standard of protection of personal data for EU citizens. The GDPR will have direct effect in all member states as of May 25, 2018 and it will affect businesses all around the world that are engaged in activities with individuals in the EU.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) adopted by the EU Parliament in 2016 provides a higher standard of protection of personal data for EU citizens. The GDPR will have direct effect in all member states as of May 25, 2018 and it will affect businesses all around the world that are engaged in activities with individuals in the EU.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the EU will come into force on 25 May 2018 and it will affect organisations worldwide working with or within the EU. The GDPR promotes accountability and governance. Organisations are required to put into place comprehensive governance measures to ensure compliance. Non-compliance can lead to heavy fines up to EUR 20 million or 4 % of the global annual turnover, whichever is higher.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) adopted by the EU Parliament in 2016 provides a higher standard of protection of personal data for EU citizens. The GDPR will have direct effect in all member states as of May 25, 2018 and it will affect businesses all around the world that are engaged in activities with individuals in the EU.

Data protection law has been revised throughout the EU. The new regulations will become binding as of 25 May 2018.

On Saturday, 8th of July, the Second Chinese Germany Friendship Cup in table tennis took place in Taicang.

Schindhelm Rechtsanwaltsgesellschaft mbH was host to the BVMW (Bundesverband mittelständische Wirtschaft) External Trade Evening, during which in front of 45 interested listeners chances of German small and medium-sized businesses in India were discussed and opportunities to create charitable benefit through CSR-projects were shown by the example of IndienHilfe Deutschland e.V. (IndiaHelp Germany registered society).

The world of e-commerce is divided into two large areas: On the one hand, there are business enterprises which exclusively deal with other business enterprises (B2B); on the other hand, there are those which primarily offer products or services to consumers (B2C).

As early as in February 2016, the German “Act on Alternative Dispute Resolution in Consumer Matters” [Verbraucherstreitbeilegungsgesetz - VSBG] implemented into national law the Community “ADR Directive” (Directive 2013/11/EU).

Simultaneously with the 10th anniversary of the Schindhelm Office in Shanghai, Schindhelm Rechtsanwaltsgesellschaft mbH opened another office in the city of Taicang, which is located about 50 kilometres away from Shanghai.

The Schindhelm M&A Team Osnabrueck has advised the sole shareholder of a engineering service provider of the automotive industry on ...

The Schindhelm M&A Team Osnabrueck has counseled the management of a company which is dealing with medical products and any other kind of medical interior on the sale of its business operations as well as on the sale of its shares in another company to a strategic follower having a continuation aim with respect to the former business operation.

The Schindhelm M&A Team Osnabrueck has advised the management board of the communication service provider, KiKxxl GmbH, located in Osnabrueck regarding the re-acquisition of 51 percent of its shares from ...

A recent fine of 20 Mio. Euro against a Norwegian salmon breeding and salmon processing company for breaching the prohibition on implementation of the EU-Merger Regulation (ECMR) currently causes a stir in the M & A practice. This case clarifies that ...

A Schindhelm Team has advised the insolvency administrator of ICT Automotive Group in the asset sale process to Korean Dongkook Industry Co. and thereby essentially contributed to the rescue of a large number of Jobs.

In 2007 and 2009 the German Federal Cartel Office (FCO) imposed a fine of overall EUR 208 Mio on certain companies involved in the “liquefied gas cartel”.

Under the coordination of Dr. Manuela Hechler, Schindhelm advised the landlord with regard to a long-term tenancy agreement regarding parts of the property at Nikolaiort 3/4 in Osnabrück.

With our newsletter we like to inform you about recent legal updates and practice in China in the future.