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Laura Spiteri

Ensuring Product Safety in the Age of AI
AI in a Consumer-Driven World: Ensuring Product Safety in the Age of AI Antitrust, Competition and Trade

AI in a Consumer-Driven World: Ensuring Product Safety in the Age of AI

Artificial intelligence (‘AI’) is revolutionising various industries and in today’s consumer-driven world, ensuring the safety of products is of paramount importance, more so when considering the innovative products being placed on the market. At the core of the AI Act are requirements that providers, manufacturers, importers, and distributors of AI systems must meet before making an AI system available for use or distribution on the Union market. These requirements cover AI systems that are, or that are safety components of, products such as toys, lifts, radio equipment, and medical devices which are classified as “high-risk” – that is AI systems…
Laura Spiteri
25th November 2024
Influencer Marketing: Protection for Consumers from #sponsored Posts on Social Media Antitrust, Competition and Trade

Influencer Marketing: Protection for Consumers from #sponsored Posts on Social Media

We all know how important advertising is in the business world. Traders use advertisements as marketing tools to inform customers and consumers about their products. With the rise of technology and social media, advertising is now taking diverse forms. Companies are increasingly turning to a more powerful tool, the ‘influencer’, to advertise their products. This phenomenon is also evident locally.  This article purports to analyse what constitutes influencer marketing and the protection afforded to consumers by Maltese law. What is an ‘influencer’? Maltese law does not define what an influencer is. However, the Consumer Affairs Act (the ‘Act’) defines a…
Laura Spiteri
9th February 2024
The Rise of the Influencer: Consumer Protection and #Sponsored Content Antitrust, Competition and Trade

The Rise of the Influencer: Consumer Protection and #Sponsored Content

Are you an influencer? Do you earn money or other benefits by creating content on social media? Influencers that are offered deals to advertise a brand’s products over social media platforms will qualify as traders and should thus disclose their adverts in a transparent manner. Over the coming weeks, the European Commission will be screening online posts to identify any sponsored posts uploaded to social media by influencers which could mislead consumers. This article will briefly consider your obligations, as an influencer, on the digital market. The rise of social media has given brand owners the ability to push their…
Laura Spiteri
24th October 2023
Mamo TCV Advocates: EU flag
CJEU Rules that FDI cannot Restrict Fundamental Freedoms Antitrust, Competition and Trade

CJEU Rules that FDI cannot Restrict Fundamental Freedoms

In a recent response to a request for a preliminary ruling made by a court in Hungary, the Court of Justice of the European Union (the ‘CJEU’) delivered an interesting ruling on the applicability of the Foreign Direct Investment Regulation (the ‘FDI Regulation’). The FDI Regulation establishes a framework for the screening of foreign direct investments into the European Union (the ‘EU’) on the grounds of security or public order by the Member States. In the recent Xella judgment, the Hungarian Court asked the CJEU whether preventing foreign investors – including companies based in the EU but over which a…
Laura Spiteri
6th September 2023