Amendments to the Insolvency Act, which were adopted by the National Assembly on 31 March 2016, will come into force on 26 April 2016.

Various media outlets have recently been reporting on the economic relationship between Turkey and the Balkan countries, as well as the growing interest of Turkish companies to do business in this region.

At the recently held Summit 100 Business Forum in Sarajevo, many topics of contemporary relevance for the region of Southeast Europe were expectedly touched upon.

An interesting piece of news in the sphere of tax law has recently been provided by the Court of Justice of the European Union decision that found Portuguese withholding tax rules to be breaching EU law.

The Serbian Ministry of Energy finally adopted the official model Power Purchase Agreements and Preliminary Power Purchase Agreement, based on which privileged power producers will be able to utilize incentives for green electricity on 16 July 2013.

As the overall level of convergence between industries in the business world keeps increasing, it is only logical for the related legal aspects to follow suit every step of the way.

The Serbian Government has taken first steps of implementing a new court system with the passing of a new Law on Seats, Jurisdictions of Courts and Public Prosecution Offices (Official Gazette RS no. 101/2013), and amendments to the Law on Organisation of Courts (Official Gazette RS no. 116/2008, 104/2009, 101/2010, 31/2011, 78/2011 101/2011, 101/2013), which came into force on 1 January 2014.

An interesting trend can be noticed recently as the Serbian Tax Administration and Tax Police have raised their level of activity in conducting routine tax inspections in companies across the country.

The largest German IP event in 2013 is the annual conference of the German Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property which gathered over 700 professionals from more than 30 states.

The new Act on Strategic Investment in Croatia has achieved its goal of reducing administrative procedures and ensuring the speedy realisation of strategic projects in Croatia.

The latest amendments to the above outlined by-laws represent a signal that the market of non-performing loans may be developing, although the results still remain to be seen and tested in practice.

The new GCBA introduces a broader scope of existing labour rights and has also included several additional rights.

It seems that the promotional efforts of the Intellectual Property Office of Serbia have been effective. According to statistics from the IP Office for 2013, the number of trademark applications increased by 40%, the number of patent applications increased by 5% and industrial design applications increased by 42% compared to last year.

A discussion on the amendments brought to the law on trademarks.

A discussion on the latest IP updates from South East Europe.

The general rule of the newly adopted Law on the Terms for the Settlement of Monetary Obligations in Commercial Transactions is that all payments between business entities have to be settled within 60 days and where the debtor is a subject from the public sector, the maximum agreed period for payments is 45 days.

In Montenegro, a new Law on Insolvency was adopted in December 2010 and entered into force in the beginning of 2011.

After the recent change in the practice of the authorities with respect to protection offered to pregnant definite term employees from having their employment terminated, which gained much media attention and resulted in significant public reaction, the Serbian Parliament has adopted the Law on Amendments of the Labour Law at the beginning of April 2013.

The Competition Commission rejected, in the repeated procedure, the Merger Notification take over of C Market.

The number of patent filings at the European Patent Organization reached a new peak in 2012.