Digitising cross-border judicial cooperation in the EU – 2nd EU Civil Justice Seminar
News
Research methods in Private International Law - launch events
Following the publication of the book Research Methods in International Private Law: A Handbook on Regulation, Research and Teaching (Elgar, 2024), edited by Xandra Kramer and Laura Carballo Piñeiro (see our earlier news item), two launch events were held.
The first webinar took place on 10 September 2024. After a brief introduction by the editors, eminent contributors to the book presented their views on methods of regulation, research and education in private international law. Topics addressed included recognition as a method, European law perspectives, the essence of comparative law, law & economics, and feminism in private international law. The webinar is co-organised by the University of Vigo. Speakers were Dulce Lopes (University of Coimbra), Adriani Dori (Erasmus University Rotterdam), Diego P. Fernández Arroyo (Sciences Po Law School Paris), Giesela Rühl (Humboldt University of Berlin), and Mary Keyes (Griffith University of Brisbane).
The second webinar took place on 23 September 2024. This webinar will zoomed in on the importance and methodology of education in private international law, addressing general educational aspects from the perspective of laymen and colonialism as well as teaching private international law in different jurisdictions, including The Netherlands and Nigeria. This webinar was co-organised by the University of Vigo, the American Society of International Law (ASIL) and hosted by the University of Sydney (moderated by Jeanne Huang). Speakers were Veronica Ruiz Abou-Nigm (University of Edinburgh), Chukwuma Okoli (Birmingham Law School), Abubakri Yekini (University of Manchester), Ramani Garimella (South Asian University) and Aukje van Hoek (University of Amsterdam).
Published: June 9, 2021
The second EU Civil Justice seminar took place on Friday, 21 May 2021. On Focus during this seminar were the attempts of the European Union to digitise cross-border judicial cooperation. The aim of this initiative is to reduce the hurdles for such cooperation and eliminate the need for paper. Digital technologies are mature and safe enough to exchange sensitive documents between Member States institutions. Both citizens and public institutions will benefit from the speed and low costs of these solution. Considering this perspective, the European Commission is considering different routes which the speakers of the seminar discussed. Gösta Petri from the DG Justice explained the background and some of the implications that the digitisation of EU cross-border collaboration implies. He stressed the importance of digitisation and the need to evaluate already exiting tools. The next speaker, Sandra Taal from the Ministry of Justice of the Netherlands, provided an overview of eCodex, a cross-border communication infrastructure for the exchange of documents in Europe. eCodex has proven to be a very useful and reliable tool which explains why the EU plans to invest more on it. Taal agrees with Petri about the need to integrate eCodex with any other possible solution that Commission’s consultation will produce. The third speaker, Alina Ontanu from the Erasmus University Rotterdam, provided an extensive and in-depth overview of several European attempt to digitise cross-border judicial collaboration. While these experiences have had different degrees of success, they should be considered in their entirety and better orchestrated to achieve their goal. Erlis Themeli, who served as host and moderator, used the development of the voting procedure for the Eurovision Song Contest (which was taking place in Rotterdam during that same week) to make parallels with the need for more digitisation in Europe. This was the spark that ignited the discussion about the importance of cross-border digitisation, which turned out to be both inspiring and insightful for the speakers and the audience alike.