Feed

16/04/2024
CMS | Webinar | Tulips & Talent
Join us on Tuesday, 16 April 2024 from 15:00-16:00 CEST for an insightful webinar on international employment via GoTo Webinar. The webinar will focus on international work aspects for your Dutch employees...
16/04/2024
Cross-border Financial Services 2024 webinar series
We're delighted to announce the launch of our third season of international webinars focusing on financial regulation, starting on 13 March 2024. Whether you are an in-house lawyer, compliance officer, financial analyst, risk manager, or any other professional concerned with maintaining the integrity of your organisation's financial practices, this series offers succinct 20-30 minute overviews of key industry trends and regulatory concerns across mul­tiple jur­is­dic­tions. If you have any additional topics that you would like us to add or address at one of the webinars, please contact us. Upcoming Webinars: 13 March: Spotting and avoiding red flags  What are the warning signals from firms that regulators act on?  How can you spot and address them before the regulator pounces?16 April: Handling a regulatory in­vest­ig­a­tion  How a firm can understand the regulator’s concerns and manage the investigation process.8 May: Financial crime  Sanc­tions, money laundering, market abuse and fraud - what are the key issues in your jurisdiction and what are the regulators focusing on.5 June: Preparing for a regulatory visit  How the banking regulator assesses a firm’s systems and controls: what to prepare and what to look out for.3 July: Handling a challenging ap­plic­a­tion  Your application for a licence, product approval or change in control is meeting with regulatory resistance.  How can you surmount these challenges?31 July: Dawn Raids  Un­an­nounced regulator visits are on the increase.  We look at what triggers a dawn raid, your rights if one happens, and how best to manage the consequences.4 September: Navigating the global ESG land­scape Is the regulatory reporting jigsaw puzzle causing more harm than good? We will provide an overview of the main cross-border issues impacting global financial institutions as they seek to manage ever expanding ESG regulations and discuss whether these rules are helping or hindering the action we need for change. The language of the webinar will be English.
27/03/2024
CMS ranked in the Legal 500 EMEA 2024
The latest rankings of the Legal 500 Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA) are out. We would like to thank our clients for their trust in us and their feedback. Our lawyers are described as 'personal...
27/03/2024
Cannabis law and legislation in the Netherlands
Medical use The Dutch Opium Act distinguishes drugs with a low risk of harm (‘soft drugs’) from drugs with a high risk of harm (‘hard drugs’). Cannabis is listed under the soft drugs category...
27/03/2024
Plastics and packaging laws in The Netherlands
1. What is the general legislative framework regulating packaging and plastic waste? The general aim of the Dutch legislative framework is to reduce litter and to protect the public interest and the...
Comparable
26/03/2024
CMS signs global partnership with leading legal GenAI platform Harvey
International law firm CMS has entered into a global partnership with Harvey, one of the world’s leading generative AI (GenAI) platforms. This partnership puts CMS, operating in 47 countries, at the...
25/03/2024
Patentability of inventions relating to diagnostic methods at the EPO
Under Article 53(c) of the European Patent Convention (EPC), diagnostic methods practised on the human or animal body are excluded from patentability. The purpose behind this exclusion is to avoid patent...
25/03/2024
CMS advises Oliver Wyman on acquisition Innopay
CMS advised Oliver Wyman on its acquisition of all shares in the capital of Innopay. Innopay is an international consultancy firm specialised in digital transactions. They help companies anywhere in the...
25/03/2024
Price Increases in Commercial Contracts in Netherlands
1. In respect of existing busi­ness-to-busi­ness (B2B) agreements that do not contain an explicit price adjustment clause: a. Is the supplier permitted to unilaterally increase prices (or does it have...
Comparable
22/03/2024
Dutch energy regulator to tolerate cable pooling for batteries
On 14 March 2024 the director of the ACM, the Netherland’s energy market authority, announced that ACM will tolerate the use of cable pooling for batteries in anticipation of new legislation formally allowing cable pooling for installations other than wind and solar parks. Cable pooling, which allows different installations to share a single grid connection, can help solve current congestion on the electricity grid. Pursuant to article 1.7 of the Dutch Electricity Act 1998, a wind park and a solar park in close proximity but owned by different parties can share a connection, provided the total connection capacity is at least 2 MVA. No reference, however, has been made for connection sharing with other installations. Consequently, cable pooling is currently not allowed for any other types of installations (e.g. battery storage systems). As a result, a proposal to allow cable pooling for battery storage systems was included in the Bill to amend the Dutch Electricity Act and the Act on Environmental Taxes. This will implement the phase-out of the net-metering scheme (sal­der­ing­s­reg­eling), which obligates energy suppliers to deduct the surplus solar power generated by households that is fed back into the grid from the amount of power that households consume from the grid. Given that the envisaged phase out of this scheme was deemed controversial, the Senate last month rejected the Bill in its entirety. This brings a solution for cable pooling for battery storage back to square one, as it means that parties must in principle wait for the introduction of the Bill for the Energy Act (Energiewet), which is to replace the Electricity Act and the Gas Act and will expand cable pooling to installations of production, storage, conversion, or consumption of elec­tri­city. Cur­rently, however, it is not clear if, and if so when, the Bill for the Energy Act will be adopted. The Minister for Energy Policy recently expressed the intention to amend the Electricity Act on this point. With the timing of this amendment not yet known and expected to take some time, the ACM announced at the Energy Storage and Distribution congress held in Utrecht on 14 March that it will tolerate grid operators and connected parties engaging in cable pooling for batteries and other installations, provided that this complies with the conditions set out in the Energy Bill. This includes the obligation to report the envisaged cable pooling to the ACM. We expect this decision to be very welcome since there have been frequent calls to allow cable pooling for batteries.
22/03/2024
Dutch energy regulator to tolerate cable pooling for batteries
On 14 March 2024 the director of the ACM, the Netherland’s energy market authority, announced that ACM will tolerate the use of cable pooling for batteries in anticipation of new legislation formally...
22/03/2024
EU Competition Law Briefings 2024
The EU Competition Law Briefings have been created to provide a platform for our clients and other competition law experts to stay up to date on the developments of EU Competition Law. Every month CMS competition experts will present a recent case by the EU Commission or Community Courts during a webinar.