Insights

Brussels and Doha – April 1, 2024: The Legal 500 Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA) 2024 edition has recognized 16 practice areas and 11 lawyers in Crowell & Moring’s Brussels and Doha offices. The 11 individual lawyers received 18 total rankings across the 16 different practice areas.

On March 19, 2024, the European Council adopted changes to the Statute of the Court of Justice of the European Union in an attempt to improve its efficiency.

A number of important Belgian and EU legislative changes are likely to have an impact in 2024. On the one hand, there are new laws that have been adopted and will start to bite, and, on the other, there are proposals that are expected to firm up into law.

Now more than a year ago, on November 28, 2022, the long-awaited act on the protection of persons who report violations of EU or national law detected within a legal entity in the private sector, the so-called the "Whistleblowing Protection Act", was adopted in Belgium.

Class actions and their (possible) role in European law jurisdictions have been a hot topic for quite a while and this is not likely to change. The new EU directive 2020/1828 imposes the obligation upon EU member states to introduce a specific legal procedure for collective repair by 25 June 2023. In Belgium, such a procedure for collective repair was already introduced in 2014. With the imminent implementation of said EU directive into Belgian law, this procedure is likely to undergo some substantial changes. During this in-person seminar, Werner Eyskens, Evelien Van Espen, Yaël Rager and Charlotte Stynen will discuss the current and future role of class actions in Belgium, the contours of the existing procedure for collective repair and the potential impact of the expected new rules, as well as the role of third-party litigation funding and the fate of collective proceedings that fall outside the scope of the existing procedure and the new directive.

As companies enter the post-COVID era, certain disagreements created by the crisis have not yet been resolved and new disputes linked to this unprecedented period are seeing the light of day.