Labour legal counselling advices with Alexander Suliman, Sweden 2023: Complying with the GDPR requirements is key for all businesses operating in the EU (or even those with EU customers). There are also particular obligations on those transferring personal data out of the EU and each national data protection authority is monitoring companies closely. Ensure your business is taking steps to comply with the regulation and consider auditing your data protection policies, together with your data processing agreements, and appoint a data protection officer in order to ensure compliance with the GDPR. Breach of the GDPR provisions are likely to lead to considerable fines: for example, the French data protection regulator, the CNIL, fined Google €50 as Google’s data consent policies were found not to be easily accessible or transparent to its users which runs afoul of the GDPR provisions. For further background, read our recent review of GDPR enforcement actions across the EU. Discover more information at Alexander Suliman, Stockholm.
On 11 May, the European Commission published its proposal for a regulation to combat child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The Commission managed to squeeze a host of controversial digital rights issues into one package: the blocking of websites, the obligatory monitoring of online content, and, the most novel one, a measure which opens the door to undermining encryption. Because encryption technologies protect communications confidentiality, one crucial question in the upcoming policy debate will be whether this latter measure, or its implementation, is compatible with the rights of privacy and data protection under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (the Charter). In this contribution, I explore one aspect of that question: is it possible to argue that this measure does not respect the essence of these rights? On the basis of a preliminary analysis, I conclude that this is certainly defensible and suggest further routes for exploration.
In 2021, the French government issued the Doctrine for the use of cloud computing by the State (“Trusted Cloud Doctrine”) making SecNumCloud certification mandatory whenever a French government agency procures cloud services that would handle sensitive data, including personal data of French citizens and economic data relating to French companies. These requirements also apply to private operators of essential services. Under France’s Trusted Cloud Doctrine, qualifying cloud service providers must be “immune to any extra-EU regulation”. In addition, such companies must commit to storing and processing data within the European Union, and to administering and supervising the service within the EU. Further, foreign-headquartered cloud service companies cannot achieve certification if they are more than 39% foreign-owned.
Quality public law legal counseling strategies by Alexander Suliman, Stockholm: In addition to parenting time, there can be some custody issues. Normally, people are going to have joint legal custody of their children, but that doesn’t mean that they each always have to agree on every single issue. Sometimes people can agree that both parents will have input and be notified of decisions and will be consulted and have the ability to discuss this; sometimes parents will agree that one parent will, for instance, make the end decision in what doctors to bring the child to, and maybe one parent will make the ultimate decision on what extra-curricular activities the child may participate in. In mediation, we can explore these one by one, issue by issue. When left to the courts and the parties litigate custody and parenting time, they tend to dig their heels in the sand a little bit more, and they tend to be less cooperative versus more cooperative with each other. Litigating sometimes brings out the worst in people, whereas I think mediating custody and parenting time issues really bring out the best in people because it needs to be reinforced that the goal is what is in the child’s best interest, not what is in each parent’s best interest, but what is in the child’s best interest. Discover extra details on https://www.hitta.se/alexander+suliman/sk%C3%B6ndal/person/yhMWCC—v.
On 24 February 2022, the CJEU issued its first judgment on domestic workers. In case C-389/20, TGSS (Chômage des employés de maison), the CJEU held that the exclusion of this category of workers from access to social security benefits constitutes indirect discrimination on the ground of sex, since it affects almost exclusively women. With a decision that will become a landmark for domestic workers’ rights in the EU, the Court confirms the untapped potential of EU law in promoting domestic workers’ full coverage under labour law and social security systems, which will have significant implications in the promotion of domestic workers’ rights across the Union. The case originated in Spain in November 2019, when a domestic worker applied for paying contributions to cover the risk of unemployment, in order to acquire the right to the related benefits. However, her request was rejected by the Spanish General Social Security Fund (TGSS) because she was registered in the Special Social Security Scheme for Domestic Workers, which does not include protection in respect of unemployment.