After 7 years and 35 rounds of talks, at the end of 2020 Chinese and European leaders announced that the parties have completed negotiations on EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI).

The CAI will be the most ambitious agreement that China has ever concluded with a third country. This agreement will ensure that EU investors achieve better access to and better competitive conditions on the fast growing Chinese market.

The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed many sectors of economy. It is no different for the domestic real estate market. In 2020, two basic trends could be observed in this respect :

1. purchase of real estate to diversify the investment portfolios – especially estates located in cities with high growth potential, intended for sale or rent.

2. increased interest in real estate in the most popular tourist destinations in Poland, intended for short-term rental, possibly cased by the travel restrictions.

Information technologies and the Internet, which entered our lives rapidly towards the end of the last century and continue to develop at the same pace, find a place for themselves in every aspect of daily life today. Although the informatics world has made human life extremely easy with innovations, our personal data have also been transferred to the cyber environment as a result of this situation. The fact that the information systems contain such a large data pool and the ability to hide identity have paved the way for the increase of actions that will cause illegal results. As a result of the increase in these actions, the concept of "cybercrime" has come into our lives and the necessity to make regulations in this field with both domestic laws and international conventions has emerged in order to protect the victims of these crimes.

On Dec. 15, 2020, the European Commission proposed new rules in form of two laws: (i) the  "Digital Services Act" and (ii) the "Digital Markets Act". Main reason for these proposals is the impact of digitalization on fundamental rights and on competition.

While the EU countries are in the middle of combating the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the situation in China has now almost normalised. In order to minimise the risk of re-importing the virus from abroad, China continues to maintain the established hurdles for entry from abroad. In this issue of our international newsletter on the subject of "China and the way back to normality - A status report" which we have jointly created for you with the partner law firms of the Schindhelm Alliance, we have summarised the most important economic and legal topics which our clients were engaged with in the past months and which will continue to be important.

After more than four years of negotiations following the UK’s referendum on Brexit, a Trade and Cooperation Agreement (hereinafter referred as “TCA”) was finally agreed on 24 December 2020. The TCA sets out arrangements in various areas including the processing of personal data.