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By Giorgos Kazoleas, LL.M., Lawyer, Managing Partner at Legal Experts Cyprus The purchase or construction of a new residence is one of the most significant financial and personal decisions a consumer can make. Residential construction contracts or agreements for the sale of property under construction are a crucial and defining element of the entire process, as certain terms they may contain can be detrimental to the buyer. One of the most critical aspects is the contractual delivery time of the project and the provision for delay, through the so-called delivery delay clause. The Delivery Delay Clause: Its Role and Legal Nature The delivery delay clause (also known as a penalty clause in the event of default) is a term usually included in the contract that specifies a predetermined compensation amount that the contractor or seller must pay to the buyer for every day, week, or month of delay beyond the agreed delivery date. The purpose of the clause is twofold: -Compensatory: ...

Judgment of the Court of Justice in Case C-368/24 /Commission v Greece (Enforcement of the judgment on the Zakynthos landfill). Failure of a Member State to fulfil its obligations: Greece is ordered to pay financial penalties for failing to comply with a 2014 judgment of the Court of Justice. Greece is ordered to pay the European Commission a periodic penalty payment of €12 500 for each day of delay until the 2014 judgment has been complied with and a lump sum of €5 500 000 In the 2014 Commission v Greece judgment, [1] the Court held that Greece had failed to fulfil its obligations under two directives on waste. [2] [3]  Greece had not put an end to the use of a landfill in the Zakynthos National Maritime Park, the habitat of the ‘Caretta caretta’ sea turtle, even though the landfill was overfull and its malfunction represented a danger to health and the environment. With regard to the present case, an exchange of correspondence took place between the European Commission and Greece...

The UK Supreme Court delivered a major judgment that clarified the law on undisclosed commissions in motor finance, which has significant implications for the finance industry and millions of consumers. Issue: Does a car dealer who receives a commission from a lender for arranging finance in a tripartite transaction between customer, dealer, and lender in which a car is bought on credit owe a duty to the buyer of the car such as to enable that buyer (absent the requisite level of disclosure) to bring a claim against the lender for bribery or dishonest assistance, or under the Consumer Credit Act 1974 (the “CCA”)? Fiduciary Duty: The court ruled that, in a typical three-cornered motor finance transaction (dealer, lender, and customer), car dealers do not owe a fiduciary duty of loyalty to their customers. This overturned the Court of Appeal's finding that the commission payments constituted a form of "half-secret commission" and were a breach of fiduciary duty or a b...

In Chamber’s judgment in the case of Hora v. the United Kingdom (application no. 1048/20) the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there had been no violation of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 (right to free elections) to the European Convention on Human Rights. The case concerned prisoner voting in the United Kingdom. The applicant’s case was the first to come before the Court concerning an election which had taken place following the steps taken by the United Kingdom to enforce the Court’s judgment in the case of Hirst v. the United Kingdom (no. 2) (application no. 74525/01). In the light of the developments since Hirst, the Court examined the manner in which the legislation in question had been applied to the specific applicant, in his particular circumstances. Considering the seriousness of his offending, his conduct, the risk he was found to pose to the public and the resulting imposition of a harsh sentence of indeterminate detention, the Court found that the r...

Judgment of the Court of Justice in Case C-38/24: Discrimination at work: The rights of persons with disabilities to protection against indirect discrimination extend to parents of children with disabilities. Employment and working conditions should be adapted to enable those parents to care for their child without the risk of being subject to indirect discrimination. A station operator repeatedly asked her employer to appoint her to a position with fixed working hours. Her request was based on the need to care for her son, who has extensive and comprehensive needs arising from disability. Her employer provided her with some accommodations on a provisional basis. However, the employer refused to make those accommodations permanent. The station operator contested that refusal before the Italian courts and the case reached the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation. That court referred questions to the Court of Justice because it had doubts as to the interpretation of EU law with regard to p...

International Conference "Revisiting the protection of minority shareholders in company law: EU, comparative and national perspectives", Wednesday 15 October 2025, Department of Law, University of Cyprus. This conference is funded by the A. G. Leventis Foundation as part of the Research Project "Protection of minority shareholders in Cyprus company law and capital markets law: an EU and comparative analysis" (ProMiSh). The Host Organization is the University of Cyprus. The Principal Investigator of this Research Project and the coordinator of this conference is Thomas Papadopoulos, Associate Professor of Business Law at the Department of Law of the University of Cyprus. Dr. Georgios Zouridakis, PhD (Essex), is the Research Fellow of this Research Project. Protection of minority shareholders is a core subject of company law, but there is no recent international conference examining various EU, comparative and national perspectives on this area.  This confer...

Digital Services Act: The General Court annuls the Commission’s decisions setting the supervisory fee applicable to Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. However, the effects of the annulled decisions are provisionally maintained. (Judgments of the General Court in Case T-55/24: Meta Platforms Ireland v Commission and T-58/24  TikTok Technology v Commission). The Digital Services Act (‘the DSA’) [1] entrusts the European Commission with supervisory tasks in relation to providers of certain services, designated as very large platforms or very large online search engines since they exceed a significant minimum threshold of users in the European Union.  In order to cover the costs necessary for that purpose and to perform those tasks, the Commission collects, from those providers, an annual fee which is determined on the basis of the number of average monthly users of each service concerned. [2]  On 2 March 2023, the Commission adopted a delegated regulation supplementing the DSA ...

Judgment of the General Court in Case T-553/23 | Latombe v Commission: Data Protection: the General Court dismisses an action for annulment of the new framework for the transfer of personal data between the European Union and the United States. In so doing, it confirms that, on the date of adoption of the contested decision, the United States of America ensured an adequate level of protection for personal data transferred from the European Union to organisations in that country. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union [1] and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) [2] enshrine the right of every person to the protection of his or her personal data. On the basis of those legal instruments, and to avoid compromising the level of protection conferred within the European Union, EU secondary legislation [3] lays down the rules applicable to international transfers of personal data.  In accordance with those rules, if the European Commission considers ...

Judgment of the Court of Justice (1.8.2025) in Case C-665/23: Payment services: the payment card user is deprived of the right to obtain a refund of an unauthorised payment transaction of which he or she has become aware if he or she delayed in notifying it to his or her provider with intent or gross negligence This is the case even if he or she notified it to the payment institution within 13 months from the debit date. A consumer holds a gold deposit account with the company Veracash SAS. In March 2017 Veracash sent him a new withdrawal and payment card. Between March and May 2017, daily withdrawals were made from that account. The consumer in question claims, however, that he never received that payment card or authorised such withdrawals.  The Regional Court, Évry, (France), followed by the Court of Appeal, Paris, (France), dismissed his request for refund on the ground that the withdrawals at issue had not been notified to Veracash ‘without undue delay’, as required by the Mon...

An Italian high school was fined by the data protection authority for using a fingerprint-based attendance system for administrative staff. The authority found the system lacked a legal basis and that employee consent was not a valid justification due to the power imbalance between employer and employee. Following a complaint, the Italian Supervisory Authority (SA) - Garante found out that a high school adopted a biometric recognition system that, in order to detect presence in office and prevent damage and vandalism, required the use of administrative staff's fingerprints. The workers involved were those who had given their consent and did not wish to use traditional methods of attesting their presence at the office. The Italian SA recalled that, according to the GDPR and the Italian Data Protection Code, the use of biometric data in the workplace requires a clear legal provision and specific guarantees for the rights of the data subjects. But the national provisions that prov...

In its judgment dated 1.8.2025 in Joined Cases C-422/23, C-455/23, C-459/23, C-486/23 and C-493/23), the Court of Justice ruled that  the double appointment of judges to the Polish Supreme Court is compatible with EU law. The Civil Chamber of the Polish Supreme Court has doubts about the independence and impartiality of the panels of three judges called upon to rule on five different appeals in cassation. In addition to a judge from the Civil Chamber, those judicial panels include two judges from the Labour and Social Insurance Chamber. The latter have been appointed to sit on the Civil Chamber for a period of three months. The unjustified and unconsented appointments of the latter judges, as well as the appointments of the panels called upon to rule on the five appeals, were decided by the First President and the President of the Civil Chamber of the Polish Supreme Court, who were allegedly appointed judges to that court under conditions incompatible with EU law. [1] The ...

 Written by George Kazoleas, Lawyer in Cyprus Article 47 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which enshrines the right to an effective remedy and to a fair trial, states that everyone whose rights and freedoms guaranteed by the law of the Union are violated has the right to an effective remedy before a tribunal in compliance with the conditions laid down in this Article (paragraph 1). This right is guaranteed without limitation to criminal charges and civil rights and obligations. As is well-known, the Charter applies at the national level only when Member States are implementing or derogating from EU law. This specific provision applies to all rights and freedoms deriving from EU law and corresponds to the rights provided for in Article 6, paragraph 1, of the ECHR (right to a fair administration of justice), ensuring, at a minimum, the protection afforded by Article 6 of the ECHR in relation to all rights and freedoms deriving from EU law. The purpose of this article is t...

A company and two of its legal representatives were convicted for a €3.8 million subsidy fraud involving agricultural funds, in the first verdict delivered after a trial by Spanish courts, following an investigation by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) in Madrid (Spain). The Central Criminal Court of Spain sentenced the two defendants to one year's imprisonment and a fine of €3 million. The court also fined the company €3 million and imposed a three-year ban on receiving public subsidies or public funds. In addition, the company will have to reimburse €2 million in funds illegitimately obtained, and the company directors were held to be joint and severally liable. In 2018, the company applied and obtained a subsidy from the Spanish Agricultural Guarantee Fund (SAGF) for the improvement of its facilities for the production of fruit and vegetables. Following this, the defendants also requested a loan from the Catalan Institute of Finance and the Directorate General o...

Erasmus University Rotterdam School of Law, department Law & Markets, is looking for a fulltime PhD researcher in AI, Law and Public Power (4,5 years with 20% teaching tasks). PhD AI, Law and Public Power Are you curious about how artificial intelligence is changing state actor powers? Do you want to conduct critical and in-depth legal research at the intersection of technology, law and power? And would you like to combine that with academic teaching? Then this PhD position at Erasmus School of Law is for you. Within the Law & Markets team, you will spend 4.5 years researching the legal regulation of AI in the public sector. How do we protect fundamental rights when algorithms help decide on who receives public benefits, how to perform enforcement or how to enact environmental policy? What is the role of the state, and where is the limit of government power in a data-driven society? You will have plenty of space to choose your own research angle and work in a multidisci...

In its Judgment (16.7.2025) in Case T-480/24 (Le Pen and Others v Parliament ), the General Court of the European Union upheld the decision of the European Parliament to recover sums unduly received by Jean-Marie Le Pen. In 2024, Jean-Marie Le Pen brought an action before the General Court of the European Union seeking annulment of the decision of the Secretary-General of the European Parliament. By that decision, he was asked to repay €303 200.99, a sum considered to have been wrongly received. According to the Parliament, Mr Le Pen had improperly invoiced personal expenses [1] under budget item 400, intended for MEPs’ parliamentary expenses. [2]  In his action, Mr Le Pen claimed infringement of the principles of legal certainty and legitimate expectations and infringement of his right to a fair trial. The former MEP also sought annulment of the debit note issued against him and an order that the Parliament pay the costs. Following the death of Mr Le Pen on 7 January 2025, his dau...

In the case of Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia the European Court of Human Rights held Russia accountable for widespread and flagrant abuses of human rights arising from the conflict in Ukraine since 2014, in breach of the European Convention. The case concerned the conflict that began in eastern Ukraine in 2014 following the arrival in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of pro-Russian armed groups, and escalated after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine beginning on 24 February 2022. It also concerned the shooting down of flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in summer 2014, killing all those on board, many of whom were Dutch nationals. The Court found that Russia was responsible for repeated human-rights violations over a period of more than eight years. This included indiscriminate military attacks; summary executions; torture, notably rape as a weapon of war; unlawful and arbitrary detentions; intimidation and persecution of journalists and religious groups; looting ...

In its Judgment in Case C-582/23 the Court of Justice ruled that the bankruptcy court must be able to examine ex officio whether contractual terms are unfair. That examination may be carried out irrespective of the fact that the list of claims has been approved and is binding.  In Poland, an individual was declared bankrupt. The majority of the claims against him, appearing on a list drawn up by a trustee in bankruptcy, originate in a mortgage loan agreement indexed to the Swiss franc that the bankrupt had concluded 12 years previously, as a consumer.  He acknowledged all those claims, the list of which was also approved by the supervisory judge. On the basis of that list, the bankruptcy court must now either draw up a plan for the repayment of the claims or make a finding that the available assets are sufficient to honour all the debts, thereby making the plan redundant.  At that advanced stage of the proceedings, the bankruptcy court considers that the loan agreement co...