Among others, thanks to our university, I’m personally teaching commercial law at the university and especially internationally. In this, we have a very strong background, as we have practised for 40 years, so we get two times the awards of the best firms in litigation and arbitration. Especially in commercial law, I think we are – you can imagine – solutions-driven, and so our advice is that we focus only on the solution.

Firstly, we do a lot of distribution contracts and termination of distribution contracts. As you know, there are lot of aspects we have in Belgium – very specific laws concerning the termination of distribution contracts. I think we have the most prohibitive laws in the world. Secondly, we do a lot of franchising. It’s a very complex contract, and this we defend for the franchiser or the franchisee. Thirdly, we review a lot of contracts which are drafted abroad and which must be transposed in Belgian law. That’s three things we do, and as a fourth thing: we had a very important arbitration case where I was arbitrator related to a share purchase agreement – always a very complex topic. And then we have a very big case for the European Union for the private enforcement of competition law. For this, we are dealing with the Lift Cartel, and we are claiming – for the commission – 10 million euro damages. It’s a very big case, and we have 30 lawyers against us. We expect the decision within one month.

I can refer to the previous answers. I repeat the case of private enforcement, a very important case where we have to give a lot of legal opinion on that. Secondly, for Belgium and Luxembourg, we are reviewing a lot of contracts, and we are now busy with the revision of a very important loan agreement between a Polish company and a Belgian company. We also have two cases pending of antitrust law, which are very important here in Belgium. We were also involved by the Belgian State in the creation of a European Institution for the development of artificial intelligence and blockchain. This is a very important project involving 12 States creating a new kind of company edict. It’s something new and is a company directly founded by the European Union and by the States. This was something very interesting.

What’s very important now is the law on contracts. The new law was enforced in 2023, and in this new law, there is a provision concerning unforeseen circumstances. I wrote a book on it because it’s something interesting for the State and for me, because of the new concepts which must be implemented in our law – this recognition of the doctrine of unforeseen circumstances. As a second point, there is a new law on torts, and for the liability of managers there is a new law. This is also something which is very important, and this new law will be force on the 1st of January 2025. For perspective, we have a new book on a specific contracts, which will also be in force in the next years. There are also new provisions concerning the protection of the franchisee because there was problem when a lot of multinational companies transferred their distribution networks from their own ownership to a franchise. The Belgian law protects the franchising more than before, prohibiting a lot of terms in the contract with a lot of new and fair terms introduced in the law. There is also a new provision concerning cyber security. As you know, the EU AI regulation comes into force, which does mean there are a lot of novelties in our law.

We try to modernise our own tools, and secondly, we give legal opinions on artificial intelligence. That’s something that is important for us. There are electronic invoices too, and also the initial regulation concerning cybersecurity. We are very active in this field and also have a specialist in-house concerning privacy.

I think the sector which is most affected is the health sector, because if you lose all the data of your patients, that’s really something very dangerous. For this, we are in contact with different companies and different hospitals. As a second point, the States is also hit by this, and especially the Minister of Defence. We do not assist the Minister of Defence on that, but we try to be very present in this field of law, and I give conferences for Swift, which is a company involved in the transfer of funds. We provide team building on that topic.

I wrote some articles on this topic in a legal newspaper. There was a case concerning climate change that we launched, and we also make an analysis of why ESG is so important in that some contracts were considered null because they were contrary to the ESG policy. We work for big companies here in Belgium, and we try to assist them in this field.

We are members of International Legal Network, and there we have webinars and training with lawyers from all over the world. That’s something very interesting. I have to say that I attend international meetings every month, and so we are informed about the development in other countries – and we try to keep our clients informed of all these developments through the legal opinions we give and also through files or through newsletters.

As mentioned, within one or two years, there will be a new law on specific contracts, which is something that’s very important. It will simplify and change a lot of our behaviours. Secondly, I think that the law on unforeseen circumstances I also mentioned is just in force. There is, at this stage, no case – but there will be cases to come in the next years. Something also very important is that there are a lot of new provisions on artificial intelligence, and I’m sure that in the next years this will be really a challenge for the lawyers – artificial intelligence and its regulation.

Arbitration will have important developments due to ICC LCIA regulations. Arbitration is something very important because I think the arbitrators may be more aware of the practice than the normal judge. They are also very efficient. Because of this, I think that arbitration will have some developments and is a challenge for the future.