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On 12 September 2020, the United Nations (UN) Convention on International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation, also known as the Singapore Convention on Mediation (the Convention), entered into force.

The Convention entered into force six months after the deposit of the third instrument of ratification, done so by Qatar on 12 March 2020. To this date, six States are Parties to the Convention, namely Singapore, Fiji, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Belarus and most recently Ecuador; already fifty three countries have signed it, including the United States, China and India.

The European Commission recently announced that all CBD Novel Food applications are put on hold while it reviews whether CBD should not be classified as a food, but instead as a narcotic under the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotics of 1961. This re-classification could potentially have wide-ranging and detrimental consequences on a fast-growing industry in Europe.

FRORIEP's sports law team is glad that, as of 1 July 2020, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has adopted Spanish as its third official language. In addition, the ICAS – CAS' governing body – has also updated some provisions of the Code of Sports-related Arbitration with regard to notifications, communications and electronic video-conferencing.

Whether you are reading up on this topic as a business owner, a foreign resident of Switzerland, or simply out of a personal interest, read on to learn the basics of what this initiative is about and what its legal effects would be if passed on 27 September 2020.

Today, 8 September 2020, the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner ("FDPIC") issued a press release announcing it no longer considers the Swiss-US Privacy Shield regime to provide an adequate level of data protection. The FDPIC has taken its time to consider the July 2020 Schrems II decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union ("CJEU"), which found the EU-US Privacy Shield to be inadequate. It has now issued this decision on the basis of its own annual assessment of the virtually identical Swiss-US Privacy Shield.

The Swiss charitable foundation is an asset planning tool suitable for international philanthropists. It offers a globally recognised solution for private assets that benefits society as a whole. Swiss foundations enjoy great freedom in terms of structure and governance. For this reason, Switzerland is usually regarded as the jurisdiction of choice for the establishment of charitable foundations, particularly among non-Swiss founders such as international families and large charitable institutions or corporations.