BRUSSELS (Reuters) – EU antitrust regulators have sought information from advertisers regarding Google’s advertising technology practices, a European Commission document seen by Reuters shows.

Alphabet-owned Google, the world’s largest online search engine, has been hit with fines totalling 8.25 billion euros ($10 billion) in the last three years for blocking rivals in online shopping, Android smartphones and online advertising.

It now faces two European Union investigations into its advertising practices, focused on technology and data.

Google and Facebook together capture over half of the internet ad sales market globally. Both companies are currently the target of a U.S. lawsuit over their 2018 deal which gives Facebook’s advertiser clients the option to place ads within Google’s network of publishing partners

Google said it was cooperating with the Commission, whose 13-page questionnaire sent to advertisers this month asked about the impact of using the default setting ‘Include Google Display Network’ introduced in 2018 for search campaigns on Google Ads.

“We compete with many others in the industry and give people granular controls over how their information is used to personalize ads and limit the sharing of personal data to safeguard people’s privacy,” a Google spokeswoman said.

The Commission said the questionnaires are part of its investigation into Google’s data usage.

“This investigation covers all services of Google, including digital advertising and the ad tech chain,” the EU competition enforcer said on Wednesday.

The EU also wants to know if advertisers receive rebates when they use Google intermediaries which allow advertisers or media agencies to buy advertising inventory from many sources.

The questionnaire also asks whether the ability to access Google’s YouTube is tied to the selection of an intermediary.

It asked if Google’s integration in 2018 of its online ad delivery unit DoubleClick impacted advertisers as well as any imminent impact from its plan to phase out third-party cookies on the Chrome browser by the end of 2022.

Advertisers have until Friday to reply to the questionnaire, which was first reported on by Politico.

By Trend

Delegation of the European Union to Azerbaijan made a statement in regards to the 31st anniversary of the January 20 tragedy, Trend reports citing the delegation.

“On this day of sorrow, together with the people of Azerbaijan, the EU Delegation is mourning the victims of the “Black January” tragedy. The tragic events underline the need for peace, reconciliation, and humanity for a better future. I express my deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of the victims of the January events,” the delegation said in a statement.

January 20 is a day that went down in the history of Azerbaijan’s fight for independence and territorial integrity.

On January 20, 1990, the Soviet army forces entered Baku to suppress the masses protesting the USSR-supported Armenian aggression based on territorial claims against Azerbaijan.

On the night of January 19-20, 1990, 147 people were killed, 744 were injured and 841 were illegally arrested after Soviet troops entered Baku. The Soviet troops also destroyed 200 apartments and houses, as well as private and public property.

January 20 is immortalized in the memory of the Azerbaijani nation as a Day of the Nationwide Sorrow.

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The EU’s General Court on Wednesday ruled that there was no likelihood of confusion between the collective mark ‘halloumi’ reserved for the members of a Cypriot association, and ‘BBQloumi’ which serves to designate the products of a Bulgarian company.

In March last year, the European Court of Justice overturned a ruling that the Bulgarian cheese called BBQloumi could be registered with an EU trademark after an appeal filed by the Halloumi Foundation in Cyprus.

The court ruled then that the name BBQloumi may be similar enough to halloumi that buyers could be tricked into thinking BBQloumi products come from Cyprus.

The Foundation for the Protection of the Traditional Cheese of Cyprus named halloumi is the proprietor of the EU collective mark ‘HALLOUMI’, registered for cheese. An EU collective mark is a specific type of EU trademark, capable of distinguishing the goods or services of the members of the association which is the proprietor of the mark from those of other undertakings.

The trademark fight is part of a broader campaign by Cyprus to protect its cheese from competitors by getting the EU to give it special status as a geographically protected cheese made only on the island.

Relying on that collective mark, the foundation brought opposition proceedings against the registration as an EU trademark of the figurative sign comprising the word element ‘BBQLOUMI’, which M. J. Dairies EOOD, a Bulgarian company, had applied for in relation to, inter alia, cheese, meat extracts, cheese-flavoured food products and catering services.

This was challenged by the foundation.

The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), responsible for the examination of applications for registration of EU trademarks, dismissed the opposition on the grounds, in particular, that there was no likelihood of confusion, for consumers, between the figurative sign ‘BBQloumi’ and the earlier collective mark HALLOUMI.

The halloumi protection foundation then brought proceedings against the EUIPO decision before the General Court, which, after having found that the mark HALLOUMI had weak distinctiveness because the term ‘halloumi’ designates a specific type of cheese, also held that there was no likelihood of confusion.

This was then appealed by the foundation at the European Court of Justice, which ruled on March 5, 2020 that the General Court had relied on an incorrect premiss “since the fact that the distinctiveness of an earlier mark” was weak did not preclude the existence of a likelihood of confusion.

Accordingly, it set aside the General Court’s judgment and referred the case back to examine whether there was a likelihood of confusion for consumers as regards the origin of the goods covered by the sign ‘BBQloumi’.

However, on Wednesday, in the latest chapter of the saga, the General Court again dismissed the Cypriot association’s action by holding that EUIPO was correct in finding that there was no likelihood of confusion.

“Concerning the similarity of the signs in question, the General Court states that the signs at issue share the element ‘loumi’ which has weak inherent distinctiveness for a large part of the relevant public who will understand it as a possible reference to halloumi cheese,” the ruling said.

“Given that the attention of the relevant public will be drawn more to the initial part of that word element, namely the part ‘bbq’, owing to its position, rather than to the final part ‘loumi’, that latter part contributes very little to the distinctiveness of the mark applied for.

“Thus, the low degree of similarity of the signs in question is unlikely to contribute to the existence of a likelihood of confusion,” the General Court said.

Experts today suggested the labour law needs amendment to improve human rights and workplace safety for obtaining Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) plus status in the European Union (EU) after Bangladesh’s graduation from Least Developed Country (LDC) status to a developing nation in 2024.

If Bangladesh can obtain GSP plus status by fulfilling the conditions, local exporters will enjoy the same current trade benefits even after graduation to a developing country.

The labour issues like workplace harassment, child labour, unionism for freedom of association at factory level and strong implementation of the labour law should be amended for obtaining the GSP plus after graduation, said Khondaker Golam Moazzem, research director of Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD).

Moazzem also suggested for a decision on improvement of labour rights based on tripartite consultation among workers’ representatives, government and owners and wider use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) method in resolving the labour dispute to save time and stop harassment of workers.

“Bangladesh has made much progress in labour rights and some progress is needed in some 9 to 10 other areas for further improvement,” said Moazzem while he was presenting the keynote paper in a virtual discussion.

CPD and Networks Matter, a research firm based in Brussels jointly organised the discussion on ‘EU’s EBA & Prospect of GSP+ for Bangladesh: Addressing challenges related to Labour Laws and Rights’.

Due to lack of adequate number of labour courts and labour tribunals across the country, especially in the industrial zones, it takes a lot of time to resolve the disputes filed both by the workers and factory owners.

For instance, currently, some 20,000 cases are pending in the labour courts and some 10,000 cases remain to be resolved in labour tribunals, the speakers said at the discussion where diplomats, government high-ups, researchers and union leaders participated.

Obtaining the GSP plus status to the EU is important for Bangladesh because the EU trade bloc is the largest export destination of the country.

Some three-fifth of the total export and some two-third of the total garment export are destined for the EU with zero duty under the EU’s generous Everything But Arms (EBA) scheme.

But such a generous preference on export will be eroded when the country graduates to a developing country from the LDC in 2024, as per the rules of the EU GSP for the LDC. In case of the graduation, the EU allows three more years grace period for preparation.

That means Bangladeshi exporters will have to face nearly 12 percent duty on export to the EU after 2027 and a tough completion if the GSP plus status is not granted to the country by the EU.

The EU has already informed Bangladesh in several occasions over the last few years to ratify 27 international convention and improve in four core areas including improvement of labour rights, human rights, good governance and protection of environment for obtaining the GSP plus status.