Aviation recommitted to its plan of reducing carbon emissions last year. It had first set itself a target in 2008 of halving the industry’s global emissions from the 2005 figure of 650 million tons by 2050. With the recommitment at the 2021 IATA Annual General Meeting, the goal is now aligned with the Paris Agreement of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 to limit the increase in global temperature to less than 1.5°C by 2100. In 2019, the global aviation industry...

​Given that the global tech giants are primarily headquartered outside Europe, analysing the recent trends in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) can help to identify which locations are proving attractive for data centre operations. Our latest findings confirm that the largest investment activity continues in mature tech and financial hubs in Western Europe, namely Amsterdam, Dublin, Frankfurt, and London. Key driver for activity in this group of locations is proximity to the high economic activity of these increasingly digitised markets. Interestingly,...

On Tuesday, the European Parliament decided by 403 votes in favour, 166 against and 58 abstentions to enter into negotiations with EU governments on a Commission proposal for a Pay Transparency Directive. MEPs demand EU companies with at least 50 employees (instead of 250 as originally proposed) be required to disclose information that makes it easier for those working for the same employer to compare salaries and expose any existing gender pay gap in their organisation. Currently, working women in...

Now that political agreement has been reached on the final text, the Digital Markets Act (DMA) will enter into force soon. The DMA’s ex ante rules and obligations will apply next to the ad hoc EU and national competition rules. Time for big digital companies to take stock of the potential implications of these additional rules on their day-to-day business operations. See our infographic for a concise overview of the DMA. Rebuttable gatekeeper presumption The DMA introduces a rebuttable presumption to designate digital...

The federal and provincial governments are gradually relaxing the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) Program to address the current labour shortage. Here is an overview of the current and upcoming flexibilities, as well as a reminder of current updates regarding travel restrictions as of April 7, 2022: Increasing the number of occupations on the list of occupations eligible for Quebec's simplified TFW process One of the major flexibilities announced is the increase in the list of occupations eligible for Quebec's simplified Labour...

A look at how signatures are used in connection with transactions and the management of portfolio companies In times of advancing globalisation and new technologies allowing large amounts of data to be exchanged in encrypted form in fractions of a second, traditional written form, i.e. only concluding contracts when the parties or their representatives are simultaneously present or by exchanging manually signed documents through the post, seems somewhat outdated. The call for digital solutions has become even louder in...

Coined in Neal Stephenson's 1992 best-selling novel, Snow Crash, the term "metaverse" has recently reentered the general public's lexicon to denote a technology hailed by some as the successor to the mobile internet and the next step in humankind's technological evolution. Though there is no consensus on the definition's precise contours, the metaverse has generally been described as an embodied internet where, instead of passively viewing content in two-dimensional space, users are in the content and experiencing it with...

Introduction: Biometric Laws in 2022 In the first quarter of 2022 alone, no fewer than seven states have introduced biometric laws — California, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, and New York — generally based on Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). Currently, only Illinois, Texas, and Washington have enacted biometric laws, and only the Illinois law provides individuals with a private right of action. While California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) covers the protection of biometric data, the act only provides...