George Peretz QC and Alfred Artley – Tax Journal – Customs and the Northern Ireland Protocol

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The Protocol claims that Northern Ireland will remain part of the UK customs territory, but in substance most EU customs rules will continue to apply, placing significant restrictions on GB/NI trade. Under the expansive definition of goods ‘at risk’ of onward movement into the EU market, EU duties are likely to apply to the
majority of goods, and the UK’s power to reimburse or waive these duties will be subject to the full EU state aid regime, as overseen by the Commission. EU institutions, including the CJEU, will have a significant role in oversight and enforcement.

Read the article

Professor Koutrakos on Investment Arbitration and EU law

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Professor Panos Koutrakos has written an analysis of the relationship between international investment arbitration and EU law. It is entitled ‘The anatomy of autonomy: themes and perspectives on an elusive principle’ and is published by the European Central Bank in the recent volume Building bridges: central banking law in an interconnected world. It is based on a talk he gave at the 2019 Legal Conference that the European Central Bank organised last year.

Professor Koutrakos analyses the ways in which the European Court of Justice has construed the linkages between EU law and investment arbitration in recent rulings, including Opinion 1/17 on the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between the EU and Canada, as well as Case C-284/16 Achmea. It also explores the practical implications of the Court’s approach.

The analysis is available online at p90.

Steven Gee QC – Journal of Business Law issue 6 – Suing Persons unknown, the EC Motor Insurance Directive and Cameron v Liverpool Victoria

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Steven Gee QC comments on Cameron v Liverpool Victoria, the first case to reach the highest court on suing unnamed defendants. The article first appeared in the Journal of Business Law and Thomson Reuters.

Please click here to read full article, which is also available online to subscribers on Westlaw UK.

Just published – Data Profiling and Insurance Law by Brendan McGurk

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The book looks at how big data and predictive analytics are being used by insurers to profile risk and monitor insured behaviours in real time. Big data is causing fundamental changes in the way insurance is provided and those changes in turn give rise to a range of important legal questions, in the realms of insurance law and beyond. Insurance law – and its reciprocal duty of good faith disclosure – historically arose in response to the information asymmetry between insured and insurers: the Insured ordinarily held most knowledge of the risk to be insured. Big data not only removes that asymmetry but may in fact put insurers in a stronger position given the variety of data sources being parsed by new technology to enable them to build complex profiles of individual insureds. This potentially breathes new life into the insurers’ duty of good faith and does so by examining how other areas of the law – most obviously data law and the GDPR – might inform the evolution of insurers’ common law duty of disclosure. A central theme of the book is access to insurance, insofar as the use of these technologies raises equality and human rights issues (for insureds refused cover) as we all as competition law issues (where new entrants may not be able to access necessary data). The book considers the adequacy of remedies in equality, consumer, financial services, competition and data law and how they might address some of the problems arising out of the use of these technologies. The book is therefore of relevance to practitioners in a variety of areas and is the first of its kind to tackle the legal issues arising from the use of big data in the insurance market.

The book by Brendan McGurk can be purchased from Hart publishing here.