Serbia’s competition authority has opened an investigation into Glovo, alleging the food delivery application abused its dominance by imposing exclusivity clauses on its restaurant partners. The agency raided the offices of Glovo on 2 November although the authority’s market study into online food delivery platforms is still ongoing. This and other recent raids have caused controversy over the practice and attracted the interest of Global Competition Review, a reputable global publication specialized in matters of competition law. The raids come as Serbia’s competition rules are being challenged before the courts in competition-based proceedings and also before the Constitutional Court per […]
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On November 10, 2022, the European Parliament finally adopted the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (“CSRD“). The CSRD intends to expand the application of corporate sustainability standards across the market by including an even larger specter of business entities compared to the application scope of the Non-financial Reporting Directive (“NFRD“). NFRD applied only to large companies with more than 500 employees. In contrast, the CSRD comes with larger ambitions and will apply not only to large companies but also to listed SMEs and third-country companies with significant operations on the EU market and a daughter company or a branch office in the […]
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The “Conference of the Parties,” known as “COP“, is an annual gathering of the nations that have ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (“UNFCCC“), the Kyoto Protocol, or the Paris Agreement. This year’s COP 27 is taking place in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, and marks seven years since the Paris Agreement adoption at COP 21 and thirty years since UNFFCCC was adopted. The theme of this year’s COP is ‘Together for implementation ‘. COP 27 kicked off on November 8, 2022, and participants are ministers, world leaders and negotiators deciding how to combat climate change and all its effects collectively. Moreover, to […]
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According to the International Monetary Fund, in the next 30 years, Serbia could lose as much as a fifth of its domestic workforce. On the other hand, the Serbian economy shows an opposite trend, and its growth creates a need for additional labor. When the domestic labor market cannot meet the demands of employers, this opens the doors for foreign workers. Of course, the national labor market is designed so that domestic citizens have a better position while foreigners face certain (legal) obstacles. In that sense, in this analysis, we raise the question of the legislative treatment of foreigners in […]
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The latest amendments to the Companies Act (“Act“) from 2021 specify the mandatory elements of the headquarters of each enterprise. Each registered office address must contain information related to the city, municipality, street or square, house number, floor, and apartment number. This way, enterprises are obliged to harmonize the address of the headquarters with the Act. The deadline for the harmonization above is November 27, 2022. As businesses must register their headquarters address with the Serbian Business Registers Agency (“Agency“), they should synchronize this data in the appropriate register to include any missing data. The deadline for the Agency […]
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The EU Digital Markets Act (DMA) entered into force on November 1, 2022, and it will start to apply in early 2023, while its “partner in crime,” the Digital Services Act, still awaits its moment in the limelight, announced to ensue in a year. Together they form a single set of new rules which aim to apply across the whole of the EU to create a safer and more open digital space. One may say it’s all about digital, but essentially, it’s all about undistorted competition in digital! A New Digital Era Begins with the DMA! The DMA rocked the tech […]
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We recently entered the finals in four categories for The Lawyer European Awards 2022 and became one of the most nominated law firms in the whole of Europe! As last year’s winner, Gecić Law was nominated for Law firm of the Year: South East Europe, a 150 million strong market, and entered the finals with three of its practice area teams for impressive achievements in competition, corporate and litigation, standing shoulder to shoulder with the crème de la crème of the entire continent. Gecić Law received the most nominations among this year’s contenders across all of Europe – an unprecedented […]
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November 1, 2022, was a big day for the EU! And not only the EU. The EU Digital Markets Act (DMA) finally saw the light of day. As its implementation will start in six months, we need to be ready for all the changes it will introduce in the tech world. Incited by the good old competition case law, the DMA will tackle the concerns that the European Commission (Commission) had in its previous practice. So, on the one hand, there will be loads of new obligations to the tech companies meeting the criteria of being designated as gatekeepers, and on the […]
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Intralinks recently published a report on Environmental, Social and Governance (“ESG “), which looks at ESG and how it gained prominence in European M&A. The main idea of the report is to demonstrate ESG’s impact on the M&A decision-making processes, supported with statistics to depict the impact intensity. The Intralinks survey shows that only 3% of the survey respondents were not concerned about ESG issues during their latest M&A transaction. In comparison, 41% of respondents said that the ESG drove their last transaction, and the remaining 56% stated that the ESG was not the primary motivator for their latest deal, but they considered […]
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Continuing our series on opportunities for investment in Serbia, we discuss the real estate sector. Historically, countries have been reluctant to allow foreigners to acquire real estate. In the past, real estate (primarily lands) symbolized its owners’ power, and today apartments, buildings, houses, properties, mines, and fields have significant worth. Nevertheless, globalization has increased the dynamics of “international” real estate trade. Real estate has thus become an important segment in international investment, both as a secondary part of the project (leasing or even buying space for the investors’ regular business operations) and as the very purpose of the investment (real […]
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