Several amendments to pharmaceutical promotional laws in Hungary came into effect on 1 January 2025, with others following on 1 February 2025. Some of these amendments have long been urged by the pharmaceutical industry.

Conducting legal due diligence on the target company is standard practice before completinga transaction. Even today, eight years after the GDPR came into effect, some companies still fail to implement basic data protection principles in their internal policies or in their relationships with business partners and suppliers. Some even claim not to process any personal data at all.

On 26 December 2024, the Law “On Amendments to the Criminal Code of Ukraine, the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine, and Other Legislative Acts of Ukraine to Improve Mechanisms for Holding Legal Entities Accountable for Bribery of Foreign Officials” No. 4111-IX entered into force. It is meant to implement the OECD Council’s Recommendation on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions.

On 27 June 2024, the Constitutional Court of Serbia issued a Decision initiating proceedings to assess the constitutionality of the Gender Equality Act. This decision implies that all activities undertaken based on the said Act, including executing individual acts and actions, are suspended until a final decision on its constitutionality is rendered.

On 5 January 2025, the Real Estate Register in the Slovak Republic (the “Register”) was subject to a ransomware cyberattack.

In this article, we highlight the most relevant changes to Slovenia’s tax laws, from the perspective of corporate income tax, VAT, personal income tax and tax procedure that enter into force on 1 January 2025.

The National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia in its session held on 27 November 2024 adopted a new Strategy on Energy Development until 2040 with the Projection until 2050 („Strategy“).

Starting 1 January 2025, only citizens of Georgia and Armenia will be eligible for residence permits for the purpose of employment and guest worker residence permits. This marks a significant tightening of the previous rules, which allowed citizens of 10 countries to obtain guest worker residence permits and had no such restrictions for residence permits for the purpose of employment. Although these changes do not affect currently valid permits, the new rules will apply to all new permit issuances

On 27 December 2024, the Parliament of North Macedonia adopted the new Law on Minimum Global Corporate Income Tax (“Law”).

The Law on Environmental Impact Assessment ("Official Gazette of the RS," No. 94/2024) and the Law on Strategic Environmental Impact Assessment ("Official Gazette of the RS," No. 94/2024) entered into force on 6 December 2024.

With the amendments to the Companies Act (the “Act”), which entered into force on 5 December 2024, Croatia has implemented EU Directive (EU) 2022/2381 on gender balance on corporate boards of listed companies (the “Directive”). The so called “Women on Boards” Directive aims to ensure that at least 40% of non-executive board seats or 33% of all board seats for listed companies are occupied by the “underrepresented sex” by the end of June 2026.

On 23 December 2024, the Register of Damages for Ukraine caused by the aggression of the russian federation against Ukraine (the “Register”) published the forms and rules for submitting claims for compensation in newly opened categories of claims. This will allow individuals and legal entities, as well as the state of Ukraine, to start preparing the necessary documents in 30 out of the 45 planned categories.

On 30 December 2024, the Romanian government adopted Emergency Ordinance no. 156/2024 (“the GEO”) regulating a series of important fiscal changes that entered into force starting January 2025, as summarised below.

Many M&A practitioners are optimistic and predict a better year, higher deal values and volumes.

With effect from 21 December 2024, the National Bank of Ukraine (“NBU”) introduced new exemptions from the moratorium on foreign currency cross-border transfers. Notably, these changes broaden the scope of existing exemption for Ukrainian corporate issuers permitting to make payments in connection with Eurobond-related obligations, described in our earlier legal alert.

Although abuse of the right to a leave of absence due to temporary impairment for work (sick leave abuse) is explicitly stated in the Labor Law as grounds for termination, in practice, terminating an employment contract on this basis is very difficult, even when abuse is obvious. Beyond the fact that the concept of sick leave abuse is not legally defined, employers face a host of formal and factual obstacles when attempting to determine abuse, resulting in losses for both employers and the state, which often bears the cost in cases of long-term sick leaves.

On 13 December 2024, the new "Regulation (EU) 2023/988 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 10 May 2023 on General Product Safety" ("GPSR") came into force.

The implementation of EU Directive 2019/1937 has established Romania as part of a broader European trend toward increased transparency and accountability in business practices. For many Romanian companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, this shift has introduced a steep learning curve, but also significant opportunities.