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French Finance Bill for 2025: what will be new for businesses? After a chaotic process marked by the no-confidence vote of the Government formed by the French Prime Minister Barnier in December 2024 and the absence of a budget vote before the end of 2024, the Finance Bill was finally adopted on 6 February 2025, and m... DP regulators focus on AI innovation and collaboration It has been a busy start to the year in the AI space, with data privacy regulators under increasing pressure to balance promoting innovation (and the potential for AI-driven growth) with respect for data subjects’ rights. We discussed the latest pro-growt... Ramsay reined in? Does the dissent in the UK Supreme Court case of Royal Bank of Canada signal changes to statutory construction principles? What do tax lawyers talk about at lunch? In my case, it’s been the UK Supreme Court's majority decision (4:1) in Royal Bank of Canada. My colleague, Zoe Andrews, has covered the facts and decision in outline here. It seems so unusual these days to have a ... Geo-blocking in the spotlight: European Commission launches evaluation of legal framework On 11 February 2025, the European Commission announced the launch of its evaluation of Regulation (EU) 2018/30 on geo-blocking (the Regulation), starting with a call for evidence released on the same day. The Regulation, which prohibits traders selling to... A question of interpretation: the UK Supreme Court’s decision in Royal Bank of Canada All has ended well for the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) following the Supreme Court’s majority decision (4:1) that the UK does not have taxing rights over the “royalty” payments RBC received. The value of these payments was dependant on the price and volume... Bank IT outages: Treasury Committee requests answers from banks and building societies The House of Commons Treasury Committee (the Committee) has published letters it has sent to CEOs of the UK's nine largest banks and building societies to request information on the scale and impact of IT failures which have affected their businesses over... Management fees in tax treaties: a ménage à deux between Italy and Egypt The Italian tax authority (ITA) ruling (13/2025) concerned an Italian company that provided IT services to a company resident in Egypt. Payments for the services (Service Fees) were subject to a final withholding tax (WHT) in Egypt of 20%, which the Itali... Consent or pay may be okay: new ICO guidance The UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has published its consent or pay guidance. This largely reflects the ICO’s initial position in its call for views last year (see our previous blog). By way of reminder, consent or pay models involve customers... First provisions of EU AI Act now apply: what you need to know about AI literacy The first provisions of the EU AI Act started to apply this Sunday (2 February). Companies that provide or deploy AI systems are now required to ensure that there is AI literacy within their operations, and certain AI practices are now prohibited.  This b... DSARs: Implications of recent legal updates The challenges of complying with the ever-increasing volume of data subject access requests (DSARs) was a topic for discussion at our Data Privacy Forum (DP Forum) in December. Legal developments since then have added to the understanding of the requireme...