EVENTS

The impact of AI on Data Protection: Ensuring privacy in the era of innovation

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ombudsman inquiry on Commission President’s text messages is a wake-up call for EU

Image
The European Ombudsman inquiry into the Commission’s handling of a request for text messages between its President and the CEO of a pharmaceutical company is a wake-up call for all EU institutions about ensuring accountability in an era of instant messaging. One year after the initial request by a journalist, the Commission has still not clarified whether messages reported to concern major vaccine procurement deals exist and whether the public is entitled to see them. The Ombudsman had asked the Commission, in a finding of maladministration in January, to conduct a more thorough search for the text messages. The Commission’s recent response failed to say whether it had looked directly and correctly for the text messages and if not, why not. While the response recognised that work-related text messages can be EU documents, it reiterated that the Commission’s internal policy is, in effect, not to register text messages. The Ombudsman has closed  the inquiry  and upheld...
Read more

Convention for the Protection of the Profession of Lawyer has been opened for signature

Image
The Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of the Profession of Lawyer has been opened for signature on the occasion of the meeting of Council of Europe Foreign Ministers organised in Luxembourg on 13-14 May. This is the first-ever international treaty aimed at protecting the profession of lawyer in a context of increasing reports of attacks on the practice of the profession, whether in the form of harassment, threats or attacks, or interference with the exercise of professional duties. The  Convention  has been signed by Andorra, Estonia, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland and Sweden. Belgium, Iceland, the Republic of Moldova and the United Kingdom will sign it on 14 May. Lawyers play a key role in upholding the rule of law and securing access to justice for all, including to defend victims of possible human rights violations. Therefore, public confidence in justice s...
Read more

Implementation of the European Court's judgments: New decisions adopted by the Committee of Ministers

Image
The Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers has published the  case-by-case decisions  taken during the Committee’s meeting from 20 to 22 September 2022 to supervise the implementation of judgments and decisions from the European Court of Human Rights. The Committee of Ministers adopted 31 decisions concerning 19 member states during the meeting, including Interim Resolutions in the  Mammadli v. Azerbaijan  group of cases and the  Georgia v. Russia (I)  case. 72 Final Resolutions were adopted by the Committee in respect of 137 judgments and decisions from the European Court, concerning 28 different member states. The Committee also adopted an  indicative list of cases   to be examined during its next dedicated meeting on the execution of judgments, which will take place from 6 to 8 December 2022. Under Article 46 of the European Convention on Human Rights, judgments from the European Court of Human Rights are binding on the states concern...
Read more

UAE: Placement in FATF’s “Grey-list” and UK high risk third countries list

Image
By Christina Poursanidou, EU Qualified Lawyer and FCC Officer As presented by FATF’s Mutual Evaluation Report [1]  in early 2020, the UAE is exposed to significant ML and TF risks, due to its cash intensive economy, the large size of its financial sector, the expansion of the FFZs and the big volume of trade in gold and precious stones. Despite the significant improvements made by the UAE, there are still significant deficiencies and fundamental improvements are needed, in order to demonstrate that the system cannot be used for illegal purposes. Last month, UAE made a high-level political commitment to strengthen the effectiveness of its AML/CFT regime. Although, during March 2022 the seat of UAE in AML Compliance map was going to change significantly.
Read more

Money laundering in the time of Covid-19

Image
By Christina Poursanidou, Lawyer The rapid and massive spread of the Covid-19 around the world had a dramatic effect on both global health and economy. At a time when governments were focusing on designing the most effective measures to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus and all other sectors have been suspended, financial crime and especially money laundering was "blooming". Despite the fact that both the European Commission and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) had warned competent authorities, credit institutions and other obliged entities of the increased volume of money laundering during similar crises in the past, the latter did not act accordingly. Ongoing criminal investigations in banks were suspended, many countries such as the United Kingdom have extended the deadlines for submitting Annual Company Accounts, while other have relaxed supervision, reporting deadlines and due diligence requirements. These decisions had as a result the lack of transpar...
Read more

Dismissal of a public-sector employee for having “Liked” Facebook posts: Violation of her right to freedom of expression

Image
Ιn Chamber's judgment in the case of Melike v. Turkey (application no. 35786/19) the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there had been a violation of Article 10 (freedom of expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights.  The case concerned the dismissal of Ms Melike, a contractual employee at the Ministry of National Education, for having clicked “Like” on various Facebook articles (posted on the social networking site by a third party).  The authorities considered that the posts in question were likely to disturb the peace and tranquillity of the workplace, on the grounds that they alleged that teachers had committed rapes, contained accusations against political leaders and related to political parties.  The Court noted that the content in question consisted of virulent political criticism of allegedly repressive practices by the authorities, calls and encouragement to demonstrate in protest against those practices, expressions of indignatio...
Read more

Death penalty: key facts about the situation in Europe and the rest of the world

Image
Capital punishment: facts and figures By 2019, 142 countries had abolished the death penalty in law or practice, leaving 56 countries still using capital punishment. There were 657 recorded executions in 20 countries (excluding China, where thousands of executions are believed to have been carried out), with more than 25,000 people on death row. The number of executions in 2019 was at the lowest level in at least a decade, down from 690 in 2018 and 993 in 2017. Some 86% of all recorded executions in 2019 took place in just four countries: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Egypt. Figures are unknown for China, since this data is a state secret. (Source  Amnesty International ) There is strong opposition to abolishing the death penalty in Asia, the Arab World and the US. However, four fifths of the 55 African countries have abolished capital punishment or operate moratoriums. How the EU fights the death penalty As part of its commitment to defending  human rights , the...
Read more