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R (Greyhound Board of Great Britain Ltd) v Welsh Ministers [2026] EWHC 670 (Admin) What are the practical implications of this case? The ruling reinforces the constitutional divide between the courts and the legislature. It explains that the scheme and framework of the Government of Wales Act 2006 (GWA 2006) embody that separation of powers, and that any judicial attempt to recognise and enforce a common law obligation on Welsh Ministers to consult prior to introducing legislation in the Senedd would trespass upon that boundary. This is not a departure from established principle; case law has already upheld comparable rules for lawmakers in Scotland and at Westminster. However, this is the first express confirmation of the position for Welsh lawmakers, and the first time this dimension of the GWA 2006 has been analysed in such depth. The court examined earlier
The solution arrived through the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC), a quasi‑judicial body handling mass claims, created under UN Security Council Resolution 687. By addressing environmental harm—most notably via its ‘F4’ claim class—the UNCC set a seminal benchmark shaping how international law and contemporary arbitral panels allocate financial responsibility for wartime ecological devastation. With present-day wars in areas such as Eastern Europe and the Middle East bringing dam breaches, strikes on chemical facilities, and the burning of farmland, the UNCC’s legacy endures as an essential reference point for states, global investors, and companies engaged in post‑conflict arbitration. The F4 claims: Quantifying the unquantifiable Prior to the 1990s, mechanisms in international law for war reparations overwhelmingly favoured property loss, foregone earnings, and bodily injury. The natural world was commonly treated as a mute, non-compensable victim of armed hostilities...
Understanding the farming business as a business Many farms still use long-standing structures that arose by habit, not strategy. Sole traders, informal partnerships and outdated partnership deeds are common. While once effective, such setups can cause major issues around succession, tax planning and involving the next generation. A corporate team can take a fresh, business-led view of the farm, asking: Who owns the land and other critical assets? Who manages daily operations? Who carries the risk and who enjoys the return? What is the enduring plan for succession? From this review, the team can confirm whether the current setup is fit for purpose or if an alternative — for example an updated partnership agreement, a company, a limited liability partnership, or a blended model — would better meet the family’s aims. Tax efficiency through joined-up advice Tax sits at the centre of most
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Controlling packaging waste is long established in both the EU and Ireland, following the 1994 adoption of the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive 94/62/ EC (the PPWD). A core objective of the PPWD was to harmonise national rules on the management of packaging and its waste across the EU. Ireland gave effect to the PPWD through the European Union ( Packaging) Regulations 2014 ( S. I. No. 282 of 2014). Since adoption, the PPWD has been amended several times and is now due to be superseded by the new Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation 2025/40 (the PPWR). In contrast to the PPWD, the PPWR will apply directly across the EU, removing the need for Member States to transpose its provisions into domestic law. This should further harmonise packaging rules throughout the EU. The PPWR took effect on 11 February 2025, with most...
The EU is reshaping the management of digital identity across Member States, with the Digital Identity Wallet shifting from conceptual policy to near-term deployment. Driving this change is the amended Electronic Identification, Authentication and Trust Services Regulation ( EU) 2024/1183 (the e IDAS2 Regulation), which took effect on 20 May 2024, building on the original e IDAS framework (e IDAS Regulation ( EU) 910/2014) that set rules for electronic identification and trust services throughout the EU. The centrepiece of e IDAS2 is the ‘ Identity Wallet’—a secure mobile application enabling EU citizens and businesses to store, control and share digital credentials such as identity documents, professional certificates and business licences. By the end of 2026, the Identity Wallet must be available to all EU citizens, residents and organisations. By December 2027, specific regulated sectors, including banks, credit...
On 30 September 2025, the European Commission declared that it had carried out surprise inspections, dawn raids, at the sites of a business operating in the vaccines field. It stated it has concerns that the inspected company might have breached EU antitrust rules banning abuse of a dominant market position, and is examining potential exclusionary conduct that could amount to anticompetitive disparagement. Leaders and legal advisers across every industry (not solely pharmaceuticals) would do well to remember several key takeaways drawn from this announcement: The Commission is actively undertaking dawn raids. They are tangible, not merely hypothetical in practice, and should be treated accordingly......
Environment ( Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2025 There are approximately 900 industrial and waste licences currently issued by the EPA in Ireland. These licences oversee large-scale installations and facilities across multiple sectors: Energy Pharmaceuticals Waste management Cement production Arising from feedback provided by industry stakeholders and others affected by EPA licensing regimes, the Environment ( Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2025 (the Bill) has been brought forward. The Bill seeks to simplify the frameworks for industrial emissions, integrated pollution control, and waste licensing. It grants the Minister for Climate, Energy and the Environment (the Minister) the authority to set fixed timeframes within which EPA licence decisions must be made. It also proposes additional mechanisms for the EPA to efficiently oversee lower-risk activities and minor licence modifications. Another objective of the Bill is to ensure that environmental protections remain appropriate,...
Find the statement below. The agreement is enclosed. Today, the DPC has executed a Cooperation Agreement with Coimisiún na Meán. In addition, the DPC and Coimisiún na Meán have released a joint statement, in which both regulators emphasise their dedication to enhancing child safety and safeguarding children’s personal data online. Cooperation agreement Both the DPC and Coimisiún na Meán reaffirm their intent to build an effective working partnership, by nurturing a culture of cooperation and collaboration across both organisations......
The Austrian Data Protection Authority ( DSB) reported breaches of the EU General Data Protection Regulation ( EU) 2016/679 ( GDPR), citing illicit student tracking and partial replies to subject access requests. Microsoft 365 Education, a cloud-hosted collection of Microsoft’s productivity applications (such as Teams, Word, Excel and One Drive), is designed for schools, teachers and pupils. The matter stemmed from a complaint lodged last year by the privacy advocacy group Noyb, representing a student, against her school, the regional education board, Austria’s Ministry of Education, and Microsoft. The complaint alleged that none of these parties properly addressed a request to access personal information handled via Microsoft 365 Education. The DSB concluded that Microsoft had offloaded much of the duty for GDPR adherence onto schools and national bodies, which cannot fully govern or grasp the breadth of processing occurring in the cloud, the...
EU, Competition & Procurement— Freedom to set resale price never goes out of fashion: The EU fines Gucci, Chloé and Loewe over €157m As a matter of law, resellers must retain substantial freedom to decide their resale prices. Manufacturers and suppliers have only limited scope to steer the amounts at which their goods are resold by retailers or other intermediaries. This holds whether the resale happens online or in physical, bricks-and-mortar stores. The constraint stems from the so‑called ‘resale price maintenance’ ( RPM) rules. The European Union and Irish RPM frameworks can be outlined as follows: The EU RPM rules ✓ Suppliers may set maximum resale prices—ie the highest amount at which a reseller may supply goods. A supplier may tell a retailer, ‘you may not resell it at more than €100’. ✓ Suppliers may recommend resale prices but may not enforce the resale...
The European Commission (the Commission) has, for the first time, sent informal guidance letters relying on its updated 2022 Notice on Informal Guidance (the 2022 notice). The letters examine how sustainability principles apply to co-operation arrangements in the transport industry. Beyond being the inaugural letters issued under the previously little-used 2022 notice, the APM comfort letter is also the first occasion on which the Commission has applied the 2023 revised Guidelines on Horizontal Co-operation Agreements (the 2023 guidelines) to a sustainability initiative. Sustainability agreements are described as 'any horizontal co-operation agreement that pursues a sustainability objective, irrespective of the form of the co-operation'. The 2023 guidelines openly permit sustainability agreements that may raise competition issues provided they deliver verifiable efficiency gains, are necessary to secure those efficiencies, confer benefits on consumers, and do not eliminate...
On 7 October 2025, an authority official said the Irish examination of Google’s advertising data handling is not analogous to a separate inquiry into a domestic data broker accused of vending highly accurate location information from users’ smartphones. The Irish DPC has opened a probe into the broker following RTÉ’s findings that the datasets marketed are detailed enough to pinpoint people’s residences, places of work, and sites of private activities. RTÉ further disclosed that brokers within the digital advertising sector have traded the exact movements of tens of thousands of Irish handsets, including those belonging to security personnel......
A former public policy lead at Whats App has been named one of the three co-chiefs of Ireland’s data protection authority, a decision that on Thursday provoked strong objections from privacy activists. Niamh Sweeney, who previously occupied senior posts at Facebook and Stripe, is expected to begin a five-year stint as the third commissioner at Ireland’s Data Protection Commission ( DPC) on 13 October 2025 in Dublin, which hosts the European headquarters of major technology firms such as Meta Platforms, Tik Tok and Google, among other big tech companies too......
Statement from the DPC regarding RTÉ's Prime Time Investigation Full statement follows: 18th September 2025 The DPC was first alerted to this issue when Prime Time made contact, and we are extremely concerned about it......
The Ryanair’s fresh arrangements with online travel agents permitting them to retail seats on its services have prompted queries from Italy’s competition regulator in the country, which is still examining whether the Irish low-cost carrier has exploited a dominant position, MLex understands to date. Since 2023, the Italian competition authority has been probing allegations that Ryanair sought to shut out OTAs by stopping them from marketing tickets for its flights on their platforms and within the wider market. After protracted run-ins and court skirmishes, the airline this year clinched deals with a series of OTAs spanning On The Beach through to Expedia. In August it also revealed an accord with Booking, stating it now holds arrangements with almost all leading OTAs. This month it added an agreement with Skyscanner as well. Yet that has not closed the Italian authority’s...
Ryanair chief Michael O’ Leary has welcomed yesterday’s framework struck with Booking to retail its flights, calling it a win for consumers and for the Irish budget airline. The carrier’s insistence on blocking some online travel agents from reselling its tickets has sparked competition complaints from rivals and a competition investigation in Italy. Speaking at a press conference in Brussels today, O’ Leary said that all major European OTAs, apart from e Dreams in Spain, have now agreed deals with Ryanair that provide direct access to the airline’s inventory. In exchange, they place reservations straight through Ryanair, guarantee customers Ryanair fares, and customers are no longer overcharged. The upside for Ryanair, he noted, is receiving each customer’s own credit card details and email address, allowing the airline to communicate with the customer directly rather than via fictitious emails or fake card details. Ryanair has...
Big four urge Ireland to boost R& D tax credit system Three of the firms— Pw C, KPMG and EY—have urged Ireland to raise its R& D credit from the current 30% of a company’s outlay, with Pw C and KPMG advocating a 35% rate. All four, including Deloitte, referenced the 15% global minimum tax, known as Pillar Two, in pressing the country’s Finance Department to revamp the R& D credit framework to keep Ireland competitive, including by widening credits available for third-party partnerships. Broadly, Pillar Two introduces cross-border top-up taxes intended to ensure multinational groups with revenue above €750m pay effective tax rates of at least 15% in every location where they operate. The proposals are presented as essential to keep pace with international shifts arising from Pillar Two......
The summary of the appeal follows. Case reference is C-454/25 P. C/2025/4590 25 August 2025 Appeal lodged on 10 July 2025 by Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd, contesting the order of the General Court ( Tenth Chamber) issued on 29 April 2025 in Case T-319/24, Meta Platforms Ireland v European Data Protection Board ( Case C-454/25 P) ( C/2025/4590) Language of the case: English Parties Appellant: Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd (represented by: H.- G.......
Updated on 14 August 2025 at 13:01 GMT: Following our initial publication, the DPC clarified the inspected hospital’s name. Statement to follow in due course......
The Commission has unveiled a standard form that AI makers falling under the EU AI Act must use to set out the data fed into their systems. Yet the reach of one of its most contentious obligations is still not, as yet, defined. Under the EU AI Act, creators of general‑purpose models, including Open AI, Anthropic and Google, must release a ‘sufficiently detailed summary’ describing the training data that were used to train their models. What counts as ‘sufficiently detailed’ follows a compulsory template issued by the EU executive on 24 July 2025. Models are built on vast datasets, for which information is often scarce or incomplete in practice. The summary aims to help parties with a legitimate interest—such as data subjects and rights holders—assert their rights under EU law. But a fiercely disputed disclosure item in the...
The Commission has issued its ‘ Guidelines on the scope of obligations for general‑purpose AI models’. Though not legally binding, they explain how the Commission reads and applies Regulation ( EU) 2024/1689 (the EU AI Act), which will underpin its enforcement practice and thus offer significant practical clarity. They succeed a prior draft circulated in April 2025 for consultation (see: LNB News 18/07/2025 40 and LNB News 22/04/2025 37). The final text concentrates on four central and closely linked themes: defining GPAI models, what counts as a provider placing a GPAI model on the market, the open‑source exemptions to the obligations for GPAI models, and certain considerations on the enforcement of the GPAI model framework. What is a GPAI model? The guidelines set out three key elements about GPAI models: an indicative benchmark for when a model qualifies as a GPAI model, how the...
During an appearance with von der Leyen in Scotland, Trump hailed the pact as “the largest deal ever struck”, noting that 15% tariffs would cover most goods entering from the EU. In exchange for dialling back a threatened 30% levy, the EU will buy hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of US energy and increase investment in the American market. Trump argued the agreement would draw the EU and the US closer and settle long-running trade disputes between his administration and Europe. “ It’s a very powerful deal,” he said. “ It’s the biggest of all the deals.” Von der Leyen likewise sounded upbeat, admitting there was “heavy lifting” at the outset but saying both sides had arrived at a satisfactory settlement. She noted the EU had long run a trade surplus with the US and that the aim was to rebalance commerce so the...
Introduction On 2 July 2025, the minister for Culture, Communications and Sport (the ‘minister’) confirmed that the Government has approved the General Scheme of the Media Regulation Bill (the ‘ Draft Media Bill’). The Draft Media Bill sets out amendments to the Competition Act 2002 (as amended) (the ‘ Competition Act’) to fulfil Ireland’s obligations under the European Media Freedom Act [1] ( EMFA) in respect of media mergers [2]. If implemented, the proposals would expand the scope of Ireland’s existing media merger regime, while excluding transactions that are unlikely to affect media plurality or that have only a limited connection to Ireland. This briefing outlines the proposed reforms and reflects on the practical implications of these changes for stakeholders. Current media merger regime Ireland’s current media merger regime is governed by Part 3A of the Competition Act......
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When evaluating a general damages claim, the practitioner ought initially to refer to the Judicial College Guidelines (JCG)...
This Practice Note This Practice Note reviews mechanisms used in settling litigation. A Tomlin order consists of a consent order paired with a schedule. It operates to stay proceedings on terms that have been agreed. The provisions contained in the schedule may remain confidential. This Practice Note describes the scope of confidentiality attaching to the schedule and sets out how it differs from a standard consent order. Sample wording for a Tomlin order is included, alongside links to precedents, as well as guidance on court approval. It also addresses varying, setting aside and enforcing a Tomlin order, including the considerations the court will take into account when handling applications for each. Further guidance is provided on interpreting and applying the relevant provisions of the CPR; however, some courts and divisions impose very specific requirements for both drafting and approval, and for approaching the schedule and confidentiality issues. Accordingly, you must consider the particular rules and court guide provisions in the forum where your claim is proceeding when drawing up the Tomlin order...
Date [ date ] Parties [ name of Landlord ] [ of OR incorporated in England and Wales (company registration number [ number ]) with its registered office at ] [ address ] (Landlord) [ name of Tenant ] [ of OR incorporated in England and Wales (company registration number [ number ]) with its registered office at ] [ address ] (Tenant) [ [ name of Guarantor ] [ of OR incorporated in England and Wales (company registration number [ number ]) with its registered office at ] [ address ] (Guarantor) ] [ [ name of Mortgagee ] [ of OR incorporated in England and Wales (company registration number [ number ]) with its registered office at ] [ address ] (Mortgagee) ] Definitions Within this Deed, the terms below shall be interpreted as follows: [ Annual Rent • the annual sum reserved under the Lease; ] [ Insurance Rent • the Tenant’s share of the Landlord’s costs of insuring the Property (as set out in the Lease); ] Lease • the lease of the Property dated [ date ], entered into between (1) [ the Landlord OR [ name ...
I, [ name ], of [ address ], solemnly and sincerely state that: [ Matters to be verified, set out in numbered paragraphs ] I make this solemn statement in good conscience, believing it to be true, and pursuant to the provisions of the Statutory Declarations Act 1835. DECLARED at [ details ] this [ day ] day of [ month and year ] Before me ................................................................................ [ signature of the person before whom the declaration is made ] A [ commissioner for oaths OR [ solicitor OR [ insert other qualification ] ] authorised to administer oaths ]...
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