SYNERGY magazineELSA Moot Court Competition

Facing the global challenge

No.46 · II-2009

IP in global times

What is Intellectual Property?STEP up with ELSA

A strategy for success

Magazine of The European Law Students’ Association

The European Court of Human Rights:

Celebrating its 50th anniversary

Synergy

ELSA International in Brussels, Belgium produces Synergy. The articles are contributions from students, young and experienced lawyers as well as academics. The articles are edited at the discretion of the Editors. Please do not hesitate to visit Synergy Online www.elsa.org/aboutelsa/publications/synergy

Contributions

Synergy is published twice a year for ELSA’s members in 40 countries in Europe. Would you like to contribute with articles or pictures for the Magazine? Please contact ELSA International for further information and guidelines.

Advertising

Would you like to advertise your courses, serv-ices, company or products, please do not hesitate to contact ELSA International in Brussels. Rates are available upon request from:advertisements@elsa.org

Editor

Frida Orring

ELSA International

Phone: +32 2 646 26 26Fax: + 32 2 646 29 23E-mail: elsa@elsa.orgWebsite: www.elsa.org

ELSA International’s Corporate Partner

ELSA International’s Human Rights Partner

ELSA International’s Media Partner

ELSA International’s Marketing & IT partner

The European Law Students’ Association, ELSA, is an international, independent, non-political and non-profit-making organisation comprised and run by and for law students and young lawyers. Founded in 1981 by law students from Austria, Hun-gary, Poland and West Germany, ELSA is today the world’s largest independent law students’ association.

Our Philosophy

Vision A just world in which there is respect for human dignity and cultural diversity.Purpose To contribute to legal education, to foster mutual understanding and to pro-

mote social responsibility of law students and young lawyers.Means To provide opportunities for law students and young lawyers to learn about other cul-

tures and legal systems in a spirit of critical dialogue and scientific co-operation. To assist law students and young lawyers to be internationally minded and professionally skilled. To encourage law students and young lawyers to act for the good of society.

Our Network

ELSA is a unique and growing Network of 30 000 law students and young lawyers from more than 200 universities in 40 countries across Europe. ELSA currently has members and observers in: Albania, Armenia, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Montenegro, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Macedonia, Romania, Russian Federation, Serbia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine and United Kingdom. Furthermore, ELSA co-operates with other student organisations across the world, for instance ILSA in North America, COLADIC in South America, ALSA in ASIA, ALSA in Australia, ALSA in South Africa and AEJCI in Ivory Coast.

ELSA’s Members

ELSA’s members are internationally minded individuals who have experiences with for-eign legal systems and practices. Through our activities such as Seminars & Conferences, Academic Activities and the Student Trainee Exchange Programme our members acquire a broader cultural understanding and legal expertise.

Our Special StatusELSA has through its activities and commitment within the international community gained a special status with several international institutions. In 2000, ELSA was granted Participatory Status with the Council of Europe. Furthermore, ELSA has Consultative Status with several United Nations bodies; in 1997 ELSA obtained Special Consultative Status with UN ECOSOC, UNCITRAL, in 1994 ELSA was granted Consultative Status in Category C in UNESCO. ELSA also has recently obtained Observatory Status with WIPO. In addition, ELSA has a co-operation agreement with UNHCR and co-operates with ICRC and all the European Institutions.

Marraine & Patrons

Maud De Boer-Buquicchio (Marainne of ELSA) The Deputy Secretary General of the Council of Europe.

Chang-fa Lo (Patron of ELSA)Professor of Law, National Taiwan University College of Law. Director, Asian Center for WTO and International Health Law and Policy of NTU College of Law

About ELSA

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SynErgymagazine �

Dear readers,

ELSA is a constantly changing constellation of law students and young lawyers. Every year, from local through national to international level, new generations are introduced. This year withholds no exception and so it is with great pride I hereby address you as the new editor of ELSA’s members’ magazine.

In your hands lies the 46th edition of Synergy. Once a black and white printout, personally handed out to our mem-bers, today a biannual magazine of 10 000 copies distributed in 40 countries and over 200 universities.

Making Synergy is something extraordinary. To reflect the greatness of our network and its activities in just a few pages is a true challenge, one that has brought me new insights and a lot of joy.

Editor’s letter

Editor's Letter 4

International Board 2009/2010 6

2013 Strategic Plan of ELSA 8

50 years with The European Court of Human Rights 10

European Ombudsman 14

Intellectual Property in global times 18

International Trainers Pool 20

UNCITRAL Working Group VI in New York 24

Events Calendar 26

STEP up with ELSA 28

Traineeship in Macedonian way 30

ELSA Moot Court Competition on WTO Law 32

European Law Moot Court Competition in Napoli 34

Bilateral Study Visit, ELSA Georgia and ELSA Czech Republic 36

Feeling Slovenia... 39

Montenegrin ICMphony 40

ELSA and the Rule of Law 42

International Conference on Criminal Law in Vienna 44

Public Interest Litigation, the Swedish style 46

Summer Law School in Lithuania 47

European Court of Human Rights - Its activity and achievements 48

ELSA UK heading towards a brighter future 50

Contents

In this edition extra attention is given to the European Court of Hu-man Rights and its 50th anniversary. It is my hope as editor that you will find this magazine a proof of the cultural diversity and the mutual understanding that exists within ELSA and that it will raise your in-terest in participating in future ELSA events.

I would like to thank those who contributed with articles for this edi-tion, bringing different aspects of the international legal as well as cul-tural society to us.

A special thanks goes to my fellow board members - for Synergy could not be carried out without your great support.

Frida Orring

European OmbudsmanComplementory to the Courts

The UNSW LLM10 specialisations

> Corporate & Commercial Law> Corporate, Commercial & Taxation Law> Criminal Justice & Criminology> Dispute Resolution> Human Rights & Social Justice> Innovation Law> International Law> International Business & Economic Law> Media & Technology Law> Taxation

www.law.unsw.edu.au/sy

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CRICOS Provider Code: 00098G

European Court of Human RightsThe guarantor of human rights in Europe

ELSA Moot Court CompetitionFacing the global challenge

Frida OrringDirector for MarketingELSA International

� SynErgymagazine �

ELSA - The Story of Our Lives

“One board, one desire”International Board 2009/2010 is aiming for a happy ending

ELSA International ELSA International

International Board of ELSA 2009/2010 (from left to right): Leonid Cherniavskyi - President, Peter Christian Binau-Hansen - Treasurer, Frida Orring - Director for Marketing, Sofia Kallio - VP Seminars & Conferences, Amanda Bertilsdotter Nilsson - VP Academic Activities, Timo Kortesoja - Secretary General, Mirko Djukovic - VP Student Trainee Exchange Programme.

The walls of the ELSA House in 239, Boulevard Général Jacques, Brussels have another story to witness as the International Board of 2009/2010 has begun its term in office. Seven motivated and enthu-siastic ELSA members are working full-time for the Association and living together in one house for one year, perhaps the most memora-ble in their lives. The casting for this story was decided at the Inter-national Council Meeting in Budva, Montenegro.

The Vice President for Academic Activities is Amanda Bertilsdotter Nilsson from Sweden. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from the Uni-versity of Copenhagen in Denmark. In ELSA International she is re-sponsible for moot court competitions, legal writing and legal research groups – all projects that bridge theory in legal studies with practice. Amanda’s biggest project for the year is the worldwide ELSA Moot Court Competition on WTO law.

Sofia Kallio from Helsinki, Finland is the Vice President for Semi-nars & Conferences. She is responsible for legal events, study visits and the delegations that represent ELSA in international institu-tions. These are projects that aim at exchanging cultural experiences and legal knowledge, and also the reason why Sofia joined ELSA. During her term in office she will coordinate the Final Conference and Publication for the International Focus Programme (IFP).

The Vice President Student Trainee Exchange Programme (STEP) is Mirko Djukovic from Podgorica, Montenegro. Before joining the

International Board, Mirko graduated from the University of Mon-tenegro. Through STEP ELSA members have the possibility to work abroad, gain practical knowledge in a foreign legal environment and experience the culture of a different country.

The President of ELSA International is Leonid Cherniavskyi from Ukraine. He holds a Master's from the National Law Academy of Ukraine in Kharkiv. As a President, Leonid is the leader of the team, and responsible for the external relations and expansion of ELSA. Leonid values the international professional experience ELSA has given him.

The position of Secretary General is held by Timo Kortesoja from Finland. Timo is studying in the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi, and he has a wide experi-

ence in ELSA. He is responsible for the Internal Management in the Network, covering trainings, human resources and internal adminis-tration. Timo’s focus is to keep the communication in the Network active and well-functioning.

Peter Christian Binau-Hansen is responsible for the Financial Man-agement of ELSA International. He is Danish and holds a Bach-elor’s Degree from the University of Copenhagen. Peter’s goal for the year is to take care of the finances in the Network, and to share his knowledge and know-how with the rest of the treasurers. He is also the chairman of the ELSA Development Foundation that has the purpose to financially support the activities of ELSA.

The responsible for Marketing is Frida Orring from Stockholm, Sweden. She is studying at the University of Umeå in the north of Sweden. Frida is in charge of the members’ magazine Synergy, the network-wide market research, coordination of the ELSA website and cherishing the brand of ELSA in the whole Network.

The plot for our story is partly written beforehand in the Decision Book of the Association, but the genre of the piece – be it drama, tragicomedy or maybe soap opera – remains to be seen. Many times there will be a need to improvise; sometimes we will have to ask for help from prompters who know the right lines because they did it once themselves. Whatever the turns of events are, the main thing for us is to make it a growth story.

Despite the different backgrounds in ELSA and in our personal lives, we have grown to be a team striving for the same vision, a just world in which there is respect for human dignity and cultural diversity. We

share the idea of internationality, commitment to work for the best of the Association and to develop – as a team, as communicators and as personalities. We want to make a difference in ELSA, the same way as ELSA made a difference in our lives as law students.

We are committed to the implementation of the Strategic Plan for 2013, as these goals are how we recognize ELSA and its core activi-ties. We thank the International Board of 2008/2009 for the tools and surface they created for us to further develop the Network more coherent, strong and active. Our focus for the year lies in interna-tionality, developing the academic quality of events and projects and in keeping close connection with the Network.

We urge all of you to join us in the journey of making a difference in the development of our Association. The story of our ELSA genera-tion is being written now and we want all of you to play a role in it.

� SynErgymagazine �

Not a single organization in the world whether it’s commercial or non-profit-making can develop progressively without a strategic plan. It is of the same importance as to have a mission. ELSA realized how important it is to have a vision and adopted its well-known “a just world in which there

is respect for human dignity and cultural diversity” back in 1992. But it took us another decade in order to realize something simple from textbooks on marketing: strategic planning is indispensible for a steady and purposeful development of any organization. At the same time having a strategic plan makes it easy to evaluate this development after some years and to give proper recommendations for improvement.

The current Strategic Plan 2013 represents the opinions of the members of ELSA which were clearly reflected by the Market Research conducted in the years 2006/2007 and conclusions drawn by International Presidents’ Meeting in Ohrid in February 2008. It was finalized in the new part of the Decision Book of ELSA International after the International Council Meeting in Lisbon, spring 2008. The key word in ELSA’s activities is International Exchange – this is what attracts active students to our Association and this is what unites them in their will to become internationally minded and professionally skilled. Thus, three focus areas, or key activities, which are the Student Trainee Exchange Programme,

international institutional and bilateral Study Visits and Legal Education, were chosen as main spheres for improvement and evaluation in the next five years. Concrete results are already starting to emerge when each national group now has certain guidelines for planning their activities and including the goals to their one-year operational plans. Notwithstanding the fact that some groups are more successful in developing STEP while others organize dozen of Study Visits, due to the strategic planning our Network instead of dissipating in local-minded activities really reminds 40 arrows aiming for the same goal and pushing the “ELSA stone” closer to our vision of the truly international European Law Students’ Association.

ELSA as a unique independent non-profit-making non-political non-governmental organization equips its members with invaluable skills and international outlook. Due to this self-development persons with ELSA background approach problems quite differently having advantage of foreign experience and being able to apply best ways from the international practice to solve them.

NGOs are valued for their contribution to the social, economic and cultural development of their communities. They trigger positive changes in the social, economic, legal, environmental and other spheres and advocate human rights in different fields like education or living standards. They are appraised by how effectively they achieve socially important goals. This could be done in two ways. According to World Bank classification, NGOs are divided into operational and

2013 Strategic Plan of ELSA:

Aiming for academic quality and concrete results…

Strategic Goals

advocacy categories. Operational organizations’ primary purpose is to design and implement development-related projects. Advocacy organizations aim at defending or promoting a specific cause: human rights or other values. Obviously ELSA has great potential in both spheres and is already working with such international projects as EMC2 or the International Focus Programme, and constantly showing its dedication to human rights education. However, I believe that in an association such as ours, comprising around 30,000 law students and having around 600 supportive ELS members all around Europe there is always room for improvement.

The chosen criterion of our Strategic Plan is the quantity of different types of events. The question is if a certain amount of uncoordinated international conferences will contribute to our vision? Of course the answer is not if those events don’t have concrete results. Hence the question of quantity turning into quality is already appearing in front of our Association. As an international organization which is able to

connect tens of thousands of its members throughout Europe ELSA can realize significant international projects. We have a very vivid examples of how ELSA contributed to international legal community for instance when our delegations took active part in the conference

establishing International Criminal Court in Rome. While increasing the number of events as part of our Strategic Plan 2013, which is the first step towards further development of ELSA, we have to

remember about our vision and purpose assessing every project in the light of its efficiency and concrete results.

Thus, giving a lot of skills and benefits to its members ELSA has great potential for contributing to positive social and legal transformations, for bringing good to international community. A long time ago Confucius said that it’s easier to light a candle than to curse the darkness. I do believe that ELSA could be that candle lit by thousands of its dedicated members.

Strategic Goals

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10 SynErgymagazine 11

It was Winston Churchill who in 1949 at the first session of the Consultative Assem-bly of the Council of Europe first spoke about a “European Court before which the violation of [human] rights ... might be brought to the judgment of the civilised

world”. In fact the European Court of Human Rights did not come into existence until ten years later when eight Contracting Parties to the European Convention had accepted the Court’s compulsory jurisdiction, at the time an optional feature of the European Convention on Human Rights. Yet this unprecedented international judicial mechanism was a key element of the Con-vention system.

It is easy to forget that in the early days work was scarce. There was no direct access to the Court, which was dependent on the European Commission of Human Rights and the Contracting Parties for the cases referred to it. Between 1959 and 1976 just eighteen cases were brought before it. Over that period there were seven years in which no cases were referred. By its 30th anniver-sary in 1989 the Court had had 191 cases brought before it and it had delivered 205 judgments.

Twenty years later, as the Court celebrates its 50th anniversary the situation is in stark contrast. By the end of last year, the Court had delivered over 10,000 judgments and some 100,000 appli-cations were pending before the Court’s judicial bodies. In the

course of 2008 around 50,000 new applications were allocated to the Court’s judicial formations.

In the meantime the Court has become a familiar landmark in the European constitutional landscape. Its jurisdiction extends to 47 countries, the member States of the Council of Europe, with a total population of 800 million. Its judgments have brought significant changes in the protection of human rights at national level and, through its case-law, the standards set out in the Con-vention have evolved to take account of societal and technologi-cal developments, via what is known as the “living instrument” doctrine.

The past fifty years can be divided into three phases. For the first fifteen years the Court was dealing with little more than one case per year, yet still laid down some important founding principles for its case-law, notably with regard to fair trial, detention and freedom of expression. The second phase saw the contours of a substantial body of case-law take shape, whilst the case-load pro-gressively increased. This process accelerated through the nineties with the enlargement of the Council of Europe and the acces-sion of States from Central and Eastern Europe, bringing with them the many problems associated with States in transition. The third phase began with the entry into force of Protocol No. 11 in 1998, creating a single full-time Court to which applicants had direct access and whose jurisdiction was no longer optional for the States parties to the Convention. The European Commis-

European Court of Human Rights

Half of a century commitment to the protection of human rights50 years of rulings by the Court have resulted in many changes to legislation and have helped to strengthen the rule of law. More than ever, the Court is today the guarantor of human rights in Europe - the very conscience of Europe

Roderick Liddell Director of Common Services, European Court of Human Rights

Council of Europe

sion, whose considerable contribution to the Convention system should be neither underestimated nor overlooked, ceased to exist, leaving the Court with the dual task of filtering out inadmissible applications and adjudicating admissible and potentially well-founded ones.

Ten years after the entry into force of Protocol No. 11, a fourth phase is beginning. It had become rapidly clear that the reforms enshrined in that Protocol were not fully adapted to the new environment in which the Court had to operate. The increased volume of incom-ing cases of around 10% per year resulted in the steady accumulation of backlog and growing delays in deal-ing with cases. Very soon thought was being given to further reform and various different processes were launched. These re-sulted in the adoption of Protocol No. 14 in 2004. However, in the absence of the final ratification needed for its entry into force, the Protocol could not be implemented, though, following a Ministerial session in Madrid in May of this year, two impor-tant elements of the Protocol have been made available to the Court in respect of those countries which have accepted them. These procedures essentially involve reducing the number of Judges required to deal with the most straightforward cases. Thus a Judge sitting alone will be able to reject applications which are inadmissible on their face (as opposed to three today) and three Judges sitting in a Committee will be able to declare admissibility and give judgment in cases which are clearly well-founded on the basis of existing case-law. Today only Chambers (seven Judges) or the Grand Chamber (seventeen Judges) have this power.

But the challenge of adapting the Court and the Convention sys-tem to the 21st century and the enlarged community of States in which they have to function remains. To this end a major con-ference is being held, under the Swiss Chair-manship of the Coun-cil of Europe’s Com-mittee of Ministers, in Interlaken in February next year. In the words of the President of the Court, Jean-Paul Cos-ta, in a memorandum addressed to the mem-ber States of the Coun-

cil of Europe: “The purpose of the conference … is to reaffirm the commitment of the States to the protection of human rights in Europe. At the same time it should aim to build for the future and to establish a roadmap for the evolution of the European Court of Human Rights …”

Whatever the future may hold for the Court it continues to have a fundamentally important role in the external scrutiny of the op-eration of democratic systems within the framework of the rule

of law. This process is vital not only for the consolida-tion of democracy and the rule of law in States which joined the Council of Eu-rope in the nineties, but also for reviewing, in partnership

with the relevant national courts, the practical implementation of the Convention standards in the older member States. In both cases, rather like a doctor, in examining the individual applica-tions brought before it, it has to identify symptoms which may disclose serious underlying dysfunction.

Looking back over fifty years of activity the Court’s achievements have been immense. If human rights have entered the language of both international and national law, it is largely due to the Strasbourg Court. Its judgments have had a far-reaching and last-ing impact not just on the legal systems of the States directly concerned, but also on those of other States parties and beyond the frontiers of Council of Europe. The Court has left its mark in the fields of the administration of justice, due process, procedural guarantees for detainees, respect for the dignity of human be-ings, whether in regard to their physical integrity or their private spheres of activity, freedom of expression, assembly and religion or again the right to property. The task now facing the member States of the Council of Europe is to ensure that this remarkable system for the international protection of human rights remains

effective for the next fifty years. Hopefully they will seize the op-portunity offered by the Interlaken Confer-ence not only to reaf-firm their commitment to this system but also to take the measures necessary to guarantee its continued success.

Council of Europe

electronic products in all the subject areas linked tothe cooperation developed between the 47 member

of human rights and international law (constitutionallaw, criminal law, family law, labour law etc), Councilof Europe Publishing also produces works in otherspheres of human and social sciences, including: health,

architectural heritage and environment.

The ParliamentaryAssembly– Practice and Procedure(2009)

ISBN 978-92-871-6485-8

Europe have had an impact on the functioning of the ParliamentaryAssembly of the Council of Europe.This new edition emphasises the practical way in which the Assembly operates and describesits political and institutional context.

European judicial systems- (2008)

ISBN 978-92-871-6521-3

This new edition of the report of the European Com-

new data for 45 European states, provides the Council ofEurope with a real snapshot of justice in Europe.The report provi-des comparativetables and ana-lysis of key indi-cators including:public spendingon the judicialsystem, the le-gal aid system,the organisationof jurisdictions,judicial person-nel, length ofp r o c e e d i n g s ,lawyers and no-taries.

Electoral law (2008)ISBN 978-92-871-6424-7

This book is a compilation of the main Venice Commissiontexts dealing with elections and referendums. First comethe referencedocuments: theCode of GoodPractice in Elec-toral Matters andthe Code of GoodPractice on Refe-rendums.These are fol-lowed by a judi-cious selectionof general studieson such funda-mental topics asrecurrent chal-lenges and pro-blematic issues inelectoral law in Europe, election systems, the representa-tion of national minorities on elected bodies and a compa-rison of the legal rules on referendums in European states.

Reforming the EuropeanConvention on Human Rights -A work in progress (2009)

ISBN 978-92-871-6604-3

The ministerial Rome conference on human rights has spark-ed intensive work. Ever since January 2001, the intergovern-mental co-operation activities of the Steering Committee forHuman Rights (CDDH) of the Council of Europe have concen-trated on developing normative instruments, of which themost important has been Protocol No. 14 to the Convention.

during a series of round-table discussions, within workinggroups and at seminars organised mainly by the successivepresidencies of the Committee of Ministers.

International justice forchildren (2009)

ISBN 978-92-871-6534-3

This work discus-ses the principlesof child-friendlyjustice at inter-national leveland examinesmonitoring me-chanisms andcurrent systemsof admissibility,determining how

is for children togain access tothem.This publication

-

recommendations to governments, international orga-nisations and monitoring bodies.

Council of Europe PublishingPalais de l’Europe - F-67075 Strasbourg Cedex

Tel.: +33 (0)3 88 41 25 81 - Fax: +33 (0)3 88 41 39 10E-mail: publishing@coe.int - Website: http://book.coe.int

Manual on the wearing of religious symbols inpublic areas (2009)

ISBN 978-92-871-6616-6

This manual explores how the EuropeanConvention on Human Rights relates tothe freedom of thought, conscience and

looks at a number of fundamental topics,including the ‘visibility’ of religions andbeliefs in the public sphere, and the no-tion of ‘wearing religious symbols’.The essential questions policy makersneed to ask when addressing issuesconcerning the wearing of religious sym-bols are then listed. Finally, the manualseeks to apply these principles and ap-proaches to a number of key areas suchas state employment, schools and univer-sities, the private sector and the criminaljustice system.

Manual on hate speech (2009)

ISBN 978-92-871-6614-2

Identifying what constitutes “hate speech”

speech does not necessarily involve theexpression of hatred or feelings.On the basis of all the applicable texts onfreedom of expression and the case-law ofthe European Court of Human Rights and

parameters that make it possible to distin-guish expressions which, although some-times insulting, are fully protected by theright to freedom of expression from thosewhich do not enjoy that protection.

Legal instruments for combating racism on the Internet (2009)ISBN 978-92-871-6540-4Various national and international legal instruments pu-nish hate speech promoting racism and violence. However,

-ture of racist speech, which can be protected by the rightto freedom of expression.

Point of view - Point of law SeriesTwo bodies of the Council of Europe, the ParliamentaryAssembly and the European Commission for Demo-cracy through Law (known as the Venice Commission),

-zation’s fundamental values - human rights, the rule of

designed to bring together, in a single volume on a sin-gle topic, the Parliamentary Assembly’s position and theVenice Commission’s opinions and serves as a referencework on the political and legal aspect of a topical issue.

Armed forces and security services:what democratic controls? (2009)ISBN 978-92-871-6536-7

CIA above the law?Secret detentions and unlawful inter-statetransfers of detainees in Europe (2008)ISBN 978-92-871-6419-3

Guantánamo: violation of human rightsand international law? (2007)ISBN 978-92-871-6294-6

Europeans and their rights Series

individual right based on practical examples and relevant decisionsby European constitutional courts or the European Court of HumanRights.

Freedom of expression (2009)ISBN 978-92-871-6464-6

Child rights in Europe (2008)ISBN 978-92-871-6269-4

Freedom of religion (2007)ISBN 978-92-871-6201-4

The right to life (2006)ISBN 978-92-871-5867-3

Human rights ininternational law(2007)

ISBN 978-92-871-6281-6

This book is a broad intro-duction to the wide-rangingsubject of human rights,comprising main texts (decla-rations, charters, conventionsand protocols) from the majorinternational organisationsworking in the human rights

level.

14 SynErgymagazine 15

Thirdly, we can be more flexible than the courts. To give you an example: a complainant does not have to be personally affected by maladminis-tration to be able to submit a complaint. In practice, this means that a Chamber of Commerce could lodge a complaint on behalf of one or more companies affected by maladministration.

Fourthly, whenever I find maladministration in the EU institutions, I try, if possible, to achieve a friendly solution. This gives me the opportu-nity to ensure a win-win outcome, satisfying both the complainant and the institution involved.

P. Nikiforos Diamandouros - The European Ombudsman:

Resolving complaints and promoting good administrationThe European Ombudsman investigates complaints about maladministration in EU institutions and bodies, such as the European Commission or the European Parliament.

European Ombudsman European Ombudsman

The Ombudsman's power lies in the strength of his arguments and in his ability to persuade the institutions about the correctness of his views, whenever he finds maladministration. In spite of the fact that my decisions are not legally binding, the institution's rate of compli-ance is very high.

Furthermore, I have the power to start inquiries on my own initiative, for ex-ample, if I think there is evidence of systemic maladministration in the EU institutions and bodies.

Let me give you an example: A big area of concern relates to the problems the Commission encounters in paying its bills to third parties on time, such as contractors. In recent years, I received more than 30 late payment complaints from companies, research cen-tres, associations and other organisations. In 2008, I conducted an in-vestigation into this matter, which confirmed that, although progress has indeed been achieved, late payment continues to constitute a serious problem in the Commission. In fact, delays occurred in more than one out of five cases, that is, in 20% of all cases.

In March 2009, I, therefore, opened a follow-up investigation to find out which measures the Commission has taken recently to tackle the problem of late payment. In April, the Commission launched an ini-tiative involving higher targets for faster payments of EU grants and contracts. Further improvements have, however, to be put into effect as soon as possible, especially as regards more vulnerable contractors, such as individual citizens, NGOs or small- and medium-sized enterprises.

Some statistics

In 2008, my office received a total of 3,406 complaints from EU citizens, companies, lawyers, associations, NGOs and interest groups. Inquiries concerned lack of transparency, contractual disputes in the framework of EU projects, procedural errors or discrimination.

A record number of inquiries were closed in 2008, namely, 355. More than two-thirds of these inquiries were directed against the European Commission, followed by the European Parliament, the European Per-sonnel Selection Office, and the Council of the EU.

More than one third of all investigations were either settled by the in-stitution or resulted in a friendly solution. In 44 cases, I issued a critical

remark. This represents a significant improvement compared to 2007, when I issued 55 critical remarks. However, they are still too many. When an institution does not comply with my recommendations in cases which raise fundamental questions of principle, I can issue a special report to the European Parliament. In 2008, one special report was sent to the European Parliament concerning age discrimination in the Com-mission.

Regarding the origin of complaints, Germany remained the source of the greatest number of complaints in 2008, followed by Spain, Poland and France. But relative to the size of their population, most complaints came from Malta, Luxembourg, Cyprus and Belgium.

Lack of transparency

In 2008, by far the most common allegation examined by the Ombuds-man was lack of transparency in the EU administration. This allegation arose in 36% of all inquiries and included refusal of information or documents.

In one case, I criticised the Commission for failing to set up a com-prehensive register of documents, as required under the EU's access to documents rules.

I also criticised the European Parliament for not following transparen-cy rules as regards to the disclosure of details concerning allowances of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). Following this inquiry, the Parliament published on its website general information on MEPs' allowances. This is a development which I applaud.

What is maladministration? It encompasses all kinds of poor or failed administration, from late payment for EU projects to refusal to give access to a docu-ment, or a European civil servant's lack of courtesy on the telephone.

Any EU citizen or any natural or legal person residing or having its reg-istered office in an EU Member State can lodge a complaint by post, fax or e-mail. The easiest way to complain is via the electronic complaint form on the European Ombudsman's website, which is available in all 23 EU languages.

The Ombudsman - complementary to the courts

The decisions of the European Ombudsman are not legally binding. There are, however, several advantages to the Ombudsman's services, when compared with court proceedings. To begin with, there is no cost to the complainant. This is very important, for example, for citizens, small- and medium-sized companies or NGOs, which often do not have the means to go through lengthy court cases.

Secondly, we are quicker than the courts. Some cases can be resolved within weeks, for example, when a simple telephone call to the institu-tion concerned suffices to settle the matter. But, in general, investigations take longer, particularly in more complex cases. We, nevertheless, aim to close all cases within one year.

P. Nikiforos DiamandourosThe European Ombudsman

1�

The new interactive guide

In 2008, my office was able to help the complainant in almost 80% of all cases, by opening an inquiry into the case, transferring it to a compe-tent body, or giving advice on where to turn.

It is important to point out that the European Ombudsman cannot deal with complaints about national or regional administrations, even when the complaints concern European Community matters. Such com-plaints should normally be addressed to the national, regional or local ombudsmen in the country concerned.

I recently launched an interactive guide on my website, which is acces-sible in all 23 EU languages. This guide aims to direct complainants to the body best placed to help them, be it my own services, the services of national or regional ombudsmen in the Member States or other prob-lem solving mechanisms. Since the guide was launched on 5 January 2009, it has provided advice to more than 16 000 users.

A service culture in the EU administration

Experience shows that businesses, NGOs and other associations will only make use of their right to complain, if they think that it will make a difference. I believe that it does. Following our inquiries, the EU in-stitutions have settled bills, paid interest, released documents, remedied injustices, reviewed processes, and improved procedures for the benefit of all parties.

The European Ombudsman's main task is to promote transparency and to foster a service culture in the European institutions. A result-oriented, service-minded and open European administration is key to improving relations between citizens, companies, and other stakeholders, on the one hand, and EU institutions, on the other.

By encouraging greater transparency, by ensuring fair and effective con-sultation procedures and by promoting high standards of administra-tion, the Ombudsman can ensure that the EU public administration is well placed to listen to, and involve, European citizens, thereby contrib-uting to the deepening of the rule of law and to the enhancement of the quality of democracy in the European Union.

European Ombudsman

The idea of a European Ombudsman was brought up in the discussions concerning a Citizens' Europe. The Maastricht Treaty established the European Ombudsman in 1993 to enhance relations between citizens and the Union level of governance.

The European Ombudsman is elected by the European Parliament. The first Ombudsman, Mr Jacob Söderman, the former national ombudsman of Finland, was elected by Parliament in 1995.

P. Nikiforos Diamandouros was elected European Ombudsman on 15 January 2003 and began work on 1 April of that year. He was re-elected in January 2005 for a full five-year mandate and will stand again in the upcoming election for Ombudsman, expected in early 2010.

More information about the Ombudsman is available at: www.ombudsman.europa.eu

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we have hundreds of generic and country top level domains (gTLDs and (cTLDs) and the use of such domains may easily infringe trade-mark and (trade) name rights of others. Through non profit organi-zations sunrise procedures had to be created to protect mainly trade-mark owners from cybersquatters. These rules are neither created nor executed by governmental institutions, but NGOs and Alternative dispute resolution bodies.

A global world does not mean global IP. Most IP laws are still of national origin. Of course, most countries and politicians felt the need that at least a minimum standard should be granted in as many countries as possible and that intellectual property rights of one na-tionality shall be accepted and protected also in other countries. Go-ing from that, there are a great number of international treaties in regard to the copyright, trademark and patent protection, such as the Paris Convention, the Madrid Trademark Agreement, the Nice Classification for goods and services of trademarks and many others. Of course the creation of Community trademark and design protec-tion within the European Union made a large leap towards unifi-cation and harmonization of trademark design rights in Europe. It is invaluable that international trademarks according to the Madrid Convention and the protocol may also be protected by extension to the European community. But on a global level, a lot of harmoniza-tion in many fields of IP law is still desirable.

This is also true for the enforcement of any IP right: Once you man-aged to protect your intellectual property assets, you want to make the best out of it by exploitation. This can be done by way of produc-tion of the goods using the mark, patent protection for technical in-

novations and so on, but also by way of licensing. Therefore, licens-ing agreements are of great importance. At least, they have to define the licensed rights, its duration, its geographical spread and limits, the appropriate license fee, the calculation bases of it, the transfer of rights and so on.

IP rights owners must also be keen to protect their assets. Any coun-terfeit may damage the reputation of the product and the related trademarks, may cost market share and turn your profits into losses. To avoid that we need an efficient legal system with authorities and judges that understand the matter and that can act swiftly and effi-ciently, because no where else than in IP, the time factor matters. Ac-cording to many product piracy rules, counterfeits can be stopped at the border and may be destroyed in simplified proceedings to avoid costly and lengthy civil litigation or criminal prosecution. But the IP rights holder also has to accept that at some point his rights will be exhausted. If a product which contains any intellectual property right was put on the market by the rightholder with his consent, he may not impede any further trade unless the condition of the goods had been changed to the worse. Within the European Union the principle of European right exhaustion prevails. Goods not intended for the European Union by the rightsholder which make it from outside into the EU may be stopped as illicit parallel import.

Lastly intellectual property assets are often protected by penal provi-sion of the respective laws and may be prosecuted in criminal court. In this respect not even within the EU, the legal systems are har-monized. Protecting, exploiting and defending intellectual property assets remain to be hard work also in the future.

Intellectual Property Law

Most legal systems protect all tangible assets such as real estate property since ancient times. Quite contrary to that protection of intangi-ble (“intellectual”) assets is a relatively new development. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and other contemporary artists of the 18th cen-

tury were not able to rely on the protection of their compositions, paintings, artwork, or pieces of applied art. Instead, protection was a privilege that widely depended on the benevolence of the ruling families. Through technological progress and the industrial revolu-tion the protection of inventions, trade names and also artful crea-tions, in short: all intellectual assets became a necessity and besides individual moves of single countries, the protection of intellectual property became an important topic of international conferences and agreements.

Today we speak of almost a myriad of different kinds of Intellectual Property Rights, and their existence is mostly driven by new techno-logical revelations. Most of us have heard about the most common Intellectual Property Rights which can be found within the trademark, design, patent and copyright laws. But there is a lot more to discover and to see that Intellectual Property Rights cover vir-tually all aspects of our life. Look for example at pharmaceutical products. There is not only patent protection of procedural claims or claims of a new, formally unknown effect of substances on the human or veterinary bodies, but there is also en-hanced protection in many countries according to protection certifi-cate laws to prolong the duration of protection. When we look for example on seeds and plants, we know that e.g. the natural genetic

sequences can not be protected. But variations of it may be protected under specific variety regulations.

We are all using our computer every day. Of course a computer also consists of tangible parts such as a screen and a keyboard. But eve-rything else that actually creates the value of a computer is purely intellectual, starting from the name of the computer which is usually protected as a trademark, the computer chips that may be protected by patent or semiconductor law, the software which is protected by copyright law and for which in some rare cases also patent protection is granted, the layout of the website, which may also be copy-right protected and of course the content which may be downloaded from the internet.

In this new and ever changing environment, our laws often do not keep up with the pace of technological developments. Some experts speak of a time of convergence of technologies. Ten years ago, a cellu-lar phone was only a cellular phone and we were happy to communi-cate by speaking to one another. Everybody knew about the basic

functions of a standard TV, a radio or about home computers. Today, our mo-biles are converted into computers and sometimes mobile TVs, and our home computer fulfill almost all functions of a standard TV and much more, like pay per view and pay per click.

As a consequence of the radical technological changes people start creating new systems of protection of their individual intellectual creations. Think of Creative Commons licenses, where each indi-vidual may offer his contents, whether literature or pictures, accord-ing to different variations of standardized license agreements. Today,

IP in global times

What is Intellectual Property?Egon Engin-Deniz, Head of IP and Media at CMS Reich-Rohrwig Hainz

Intellectual Property Law

Egon Engin-DenizPartner, CMS Reich-Rohrwig Hainz

Ten years ago, a cellular phone was only a cellular phone and we were happy to communicate by speaking to one another.

20 SynErgymagazine 21

International Trainers Pool International Trainers Pool

The International Trainers Pool (ITP)

Training resolves all internal needsThe ITP was set up in autumn 2000. The concept of the ITP is to have former active ELSA members acting as trainers to cover the training needs and geographical span of the association. Through the ITP, ELSA creates the means for all groups to evolve equally, thus ensuring an even stronger Network. The aim of the International Trainers’ Pool is to support ELSA by providing trainings. ITP aims to assist every existing and upcoming ELSA group and supports them in planning, moderation and prob-lem solving. Furthermore, ITP contributes in creating increasingly internationally minded individuals and groups of ELSA and supports the acquired knowledge with appropriate training in personal skills, i.e. soft skills, with the aim to increase the quality on ELSA’s activities. Today we have 37 trainers from 19 different countries that constitute the ITP

Tiago Moreira AlvesNationality: PortugeseActive in ELSA since 2000Preferred trainings: Internal Management, Fundraising, Motivation Skills, Human Resources

Sofia AmaralNationality: PortugeseActive in ELSA since 1996Preferred trainings: General ELSA Knowledge, Transition, Planning, Teambuilding, Communication

Pierangelo GrazianiNationality: ItalianActive in ELSA since 1988Preferred trainings: General ELSA Knowledge, BEE, Academic Activities, STEP, S&C, Fundraising, Project Management, Motivation, Chairing

Kate AleksidzeNationality: GeorgianActive in ELSA since 1999Preferred trainings: General ELSA Knowledge, Project Management, Teambuilding, Motiva-tion, Decision Making, Planning, Leadership, Communication, Chairing, Presentation Skills

Fatma Zuhre AkinciNationality: TurkishActive in ELSA since 1999Preferred trainings: General ELSA Knowledge, Planning, Chairing, Project Management, Teambuilding

Jane BabbNationality: IrishActive in ELSA since 1991Preferred trainings: General ELSA knowledge, Teambuilding, Presentation Skills

Andrea BrizziNationality: ItalianActive in ELSA since 1998Preferred trainings: General ELSA knowledge, Board Management, Planning

Rebeca Cenalmor RejasNationality: SpanishActive in ELSA since 1997Preferred trainings: Project Management, Teambuilding, Conflict Resolution

Tuulia HietaniemiNationality: FinnishActive in ELSA since 2005Preferred trainings: General ELSA Knowledge, Internal Management, STEP, Communication, Presentation Skills

Jochen HoerlinNationality: GermanActive in ELSA since 1998Preferred trainings: Strategy and Planning, Communication, Teambuilding, Leadership Skills, Conflict and Project Management

Kirsti Jullum JensenNationality: NorwegianActive in ELSA since 2001Preferred trainings: S&C, Project Management, Communication, Teambuilding

Sylvie Fransziska Kleinke Nationality: GermanActive in ELSA since 2002Preferred trainings: Project Management, Teambuilding/development, Presentation Skills, Motivation Skills, OYOP

Koen KlootwijkNationality: DutchActive in ELSA since 2005Preferred trainings: General ELSA Knowledge, BEE, Academic Activities/EMC², S&C, Motivation, Teambuilding, Presentation Skills, Projects Management

Veronika KotekNationality: Swiss-CzechActive in ELSA since 1996Preferred trainings: Conflict Resolution, Board Management, Teambuilding, Project Management

Marcin (Boulie) KrzyskoNationality: PolishActive in ELSA since 1995Preferred trainings: Marketing, Project Management, Communication, Strategical and Tactical Planning, Selling Technique, Academic Activities, Internal Management

Umut KurmanNationality: TurkishActive in ELSA since 1999Preferred trainings: General ELSA Knowledge, Project Management, Motivation Skills

Halvor LekvenNationality: NorwegianActive in ELSA since 2003Preferred trainings: General ELSA Knowledge, Academic Activities, Project & Time Management, Communication, Teambuilding, Presentation Skills

Nina KlotzNationality: GermanActive in ELSA since 2000Preferred trainings: Project Management, Teambuilding, Presentation Skills, Chairing

22 SynErgymagazine 2�

International Trainers Pool International Trainers Pool

We’re World-Class. Are You?In the recent official assessment of the quality of staffexpertise (the RAE 2008), 60 percent of the Law School’s outputwas officially graded ‘world-class’ or ‘internationally excellent’– in effect this ranks Strathclyde Law School as the seventh bestLaw School in the UK (out of 67) and top in Scotland. Thismeans students are being taught by among the very bestlegal experts in the UK.

Students can choose from a diverse range of LLMs andresearch degrees, including the latest internationally focusedprogrammes* which offer a unique opportunity to undertake areal-world field dissertation within an international organisation.

• Construction Law • Criminology • Human Rights Law • IT & Telecommunications Law • International Economic Law* • International Law and Sustainable Development*Find out more by visiting our websiteor getting in touch with the department(Please quote: SYNERGY1/09).

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The University of Strathclyde is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, number SC015263.

The place of useful learning

Maria LitzellNationality: SwedishActive in ELSA since 2001Preferred trainings: Marketing, Communication, Teambuilding

Lavinia MicallefNationality: MalteseActive in ELSA since 2005Preferred trainings: Marketing, Public Relations, Planning, Project Management, Fundraising

Maria MoguilnaiaNationality: RussianActive in ELSA since 2000Preferred trainings: General ELSA Knowledge, Motivation, Communication, Presentation Skills, Leadership, Chairing,

Mircea Serban MoraruNationality: RomanianActive in ELSA since 2001Preferred trainings: General ELSA Knowledge, Marketing, Human Resources, Conflict Management, Fundraising, External Relations, Project Management, Presentation Skills, Internal Management

Espen Rostrup NakstadNationality: NorwegianActive in ELSA since 2000Preferred trainings: Board Management, Strategic Planning, Risk Management, External Relations/UN/Institutional Relations, Chairing, Project Management, Presentation Skills, Communication & Networking

Clemens NiednerNationality: GermanActive in ELSA since 1998Preferred trainings: BEE, Fundraising, Teambuilding

Delia OrabonaNationality: ItalianActive in ELSA since 2002Preferred trainings: STEP, Strategic Planning, External Relations, Motivation, Teambuilding, Project Management, Communication, Presentation Skills

Leander PalleitNationality: GermanActive in ELSA since 1994Preferred trainings: BEE, Teambuilding, Strategic Planning

Nina Perch-NielsenNationality: SwissActive in ELSA since 1997Preferred trainings: Project Management, Teambuilding, Communication

Andras PerlakiNationality: HungarianActive in ELSA since 2000Preferred trainings: Board Management, Conflict Management, Presentation Skills, Public Speaking

Rudolf Christoph ReietNationality: GermanActive in ELSA since 2003Preferred trainings: Project Management, Teambuilding, Presentation Skills

John Ellul SullivanNationality: MalteseActive in ELSA since 2001Preferred trainings: Board Management, External Relation, Fundraising, Teambuilding, Chairing

Michael Ellul SullivanNationality: MalteseActive in ELSA since 1998Preferred trainings: Project Management, Fundraising, Board Management

Karina SultanovaNationality: KazakhActive in ELSA since 1999Preferred trainings: Negotiation, Communication, Conflict Management, Teambuilding, Board Management, Motivation, OYOP, Risk Management, Presentation Skills, Leadership

Andras SzilagyiNationality: HungarianActive in ELSA since 2002Preferred trainings: General ELSA Knowledge, Financial, Board and Project Management, Presentation and Negotiation Skills,Chairing, Communication, Planning, Leadership

Torgeir WillumsenNationality: NorwegianActive in ELSA since 2002Preferred trainings: Board Management, External Relations, Project Management, Fundraising

Joanna Zawiejska - RatajNationality: PolishActive in ELSA since 1999Preferred trainings: Project Management, Study Visits, Teambuilding, S&C

Patrick ZupansicNationality: DutchActive in ELSA since 2002Preferred trainings: General ELSA Knowledge, Internal Management, S&C, Human Rights, Project & Time Management, Teambuilding, Chairing, Communication, Presentation Skills

Johanna Lindblad Ó DuinnínNationality: SwedishActive in ELSA since 2002Preferred trainings: General ELSA Knowledge, Internal Management, Communication, Teambuilding, Transition

24

SPELSelected Papers on European Law

What is SPEL?

ELSA‘s online law review

What can You gain by contributing?

Recognition by professionals

Who to contact?

vpaa@elsa.org

„Share your opinion with Europe“

Where can you fi nd more

information about SPEL?

www.elsa.org/spel

From April 27th until May 1st, a Delegation consisting of the Head of Delegation Meri-Katriina Kanervisto (ELSA Finland), Barbara Sandfuchs, Johanna Schweiz, Lutz Heidelberg and Gre-gor Ludwig (all ELSA Germany) had the privilege to join as an observer the semi-annual session of the United Nations Commis-sion on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL, Working Group VI: Security Interests) in New York. As one of the six Working Groups, it performs substantive preparatory work on security rights for the Commission.

The aim of the 15th session was to continue the work on a draft Annex to the UNCITRAL Legislative Guide on Secured Trans-actions dealing with security rights in intellectual property. The Guide was used as a starting point and background for the dis-cussions. The draft Annex will be submitted to the Commission for final approval and adoption at its 43rd session in 2010.

The Delegation’s general task was to represent ELSA in a profes-sional way at UNCITRAL. We participated in the meetings of the Working Group and studied the relevant materials. At UNCI-TRAL, we established contacts to delegations of other NGOs, states, experts and other participants.

It was an invaluable experience for all members of the Delegation not only to participate in the Working Group’s sessions themselves and get an impression of how (in part) very complex and conflicting is-

sues of international law are dealt with, but also to find that we, as law students, were met with great interest and openness by members of national delegations as well as other NGOs.

We discovered that ELSA is generally well known by other del-egations and that ELSA Delegations are very welcome to join UNCITRAL’s meetings as well as to participate in the ”informal consultations” (coffee breaks). We were surprised to learn that it seems to be common for other NGOs such as the New York City Bar Association or the Commercial Finance Association to invite all members and observers of the Working Group to informal receptions and dinner parties after the meetings.

We can therefore recommend applying for a place in one of the ELSA Delegations to everyone, despite the considerable amount of preparation and time (and money) such an undertaking, of course, requires. There are few chances for students to get this

kind of first hand impression of how legal decision-making works on an international level. Besides, the net-working potential for members of the Delegation is considerable, both as a representative of ELSA and as a law student.

The participation in a Delegation to an international body and in par-ticular to UNCITRAL is an experi-ence you will probably never forget. It enriches the academic studies and provides practical insights you can't find anywhere else.

Report from ELSA Delegation:

UNCITRAL Working Group VI in New York

Delegation

From left to right: Barbara Sandfuchs, Meri-Katriina Kanervisto, Lutz Heidelberg, Gregor Ludwig, Johanna Schweiz

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After one year of implementing this strategy and in closer coopera-tion with other areas, ELSA International signed a Traineeship agree-ment with the Council of Europe in July this year. This means that even though there is a crisis in the world, interest for STEP is not reducing. With active cooperation of boards on local, national and international level, we can achieve the goals we set in Lisbon and raise awareness of the possibility for law students to gain practical knowledge and skills through ELSA.

However, if we follow the strategy and se-cure all the contacts of the STEP

employers, we will reach at least a constant number of train-

eeships each year. In or-der to achieve the goals

in STEP, we need to work as one Network and we have to start immediately. The new STEP Strat-egy is in line with the new Human Resources Strategy ELSA Internation-al presented during the ICM Budva.

These two strategies have good synergies

with each other.

One of the main aims of the programme is to give

students the tools that are necessary to become well-skilled

lawyers. It is an excellent way to get an insight into the work of lawyers and into

foreign legal systems.

We live in a world where borders are getting less and less invisible. For us as law students it means that we have to learn how to be more flexible, internationally minded and aware of global issues and international cooperation. That is where STEP comes in. Through STEP ELSA offers its members the possibility to combine a cultural experience with the opportunity to improve their legal skills and to get involved in a foreign legal environment. As we are working for more than 30 000 members that are willing to STEP up with ELSA, I encourage officers in the whole Network to take part in the mag-nificent work and spirit that is provided by ELSA.

when the International STEP Meeting is planned to take place, we should do evaluation of the list of the old employers, done by the previous year’s officers. During September and October we have to concentrate ourselves on the first part of Job Hunting when we are approaching employers that we already had cooperation with. After evaluation at the Autumn ICM of the first part of the Strategy, we have to continue in November, December and January to actively work on the second part of Job Hunting when we are approaching all possible employers.

After the preparations and publishing the STEP Newsletter in the end of Feb-ruary, we will do strong promo-tion of the traineeships among students. The time after the spring ICM is dedicated to the evaluation of the Stu-dent Hunting and to cre-ating ways for improve-ment. After receiving applications from all over Europe, ELSA In-ternational will during April and May match students to the trainee-ships. Right after that when we announce the results of the selec-tions by the employer, STEP officers with their team should do prepara-tions for the Reception so that summer traineeships can be well prepared. After recep-tion and evaluation we are starting a new circle of transition and preparations for new terms in office.

This Calendar should serve as a tool to achieve the Strategic Goals in the long run but of course, it cannot work immediately. In ad-dition to the Calendar, STEP is already “refreshed” with the new STEP forms, which are in line with our Corporate Identity and the new regulations in the Decision Book after Budva. The procedure of STEP is clearer, and the officers should not struggle with under-standing the regulations. ELSA International is, alongside officers, working on creating a STEP Employer Database. With this database we can work on gaining STEP traineeships and refreshing coopera-tion between National and Local Boards with potential sponsors and partners.

Student Trainee Exchange Programme

STEP is an ELSA product and a key area that is set as one of the Strategic Goals for 2013. The Strategic Plan was drafted by the Net-work at the International Presidents’ Meeting (IPM) in Ohrid 2008, and accepted by the

Council during the International Council Meeting (ICM) in Lisbon 2008 as the main focus of our Network until the year 2013. Accord-ing to reports from national presidents at the IPM in Istanbul during the first year of implementation of the Goals, most of the countries had the biggest problems with STEP.

The simple fact that in the 90’s we had over 500 traineeships with a goal to reach 1 000 of them, proves that this product was doing well. After those “golden ages” of STEP, we faced dramatic decrease in the number of traineeships. Some of the problems were connected with the malfunctioning of the ELSA Online, but some significant reasons were connected also with the lack of continuity and long term planning in STEP. In some cases the situation was affected by insufficient transition – or lack of transition.

STEP is a unique product, and thanks to the programme ELSA is recognized among the student society. One proof of that is the mar-ket research conducted in 2006/2007 which showed that 42% of ELSA members stated the possibility for international exchange as

one of the main reasons for joining ELSA. In addition, the research showed that STEP was the product that ELSA is known for.

The International Board 2008/2009 concluded that STEP can be improved if we start planning in advance and have a strategy for the future. However, it is not enough if the effort comes only from the international level, but it requires also a huge involvement of the Network.

Therefore, now is the time to bring STEP back close to the Net-work. With all this said, the International Board 2008/2009 created the STEP Calendar for the upcoming years as a part of the long term plan for STEP. The Calendar was presented at the International Presidents’ Meeting in Istanbul, at the STEP Meeting in Lisbon and at the International Council Meeting in Budva. It was welcomed by the participants and acknowledged as a good tool to work with. The workshop at the International STEP and Marketing Meeting in Prague concluded that this tool should be improved in cooperation with other areas of ELSA.

According to this Calendar the ELSA Network should plan the STEP activities starting from July when a great majority of National and Local Boards are in the process of transition by securing the old contacts (previous year’s employers). In August and September

Student Trainee Exchange Programme

STEP up with ELSA

A strategy for successIn order to continue improving our traineeship programme we need to follow our STEP Strategy set by the network. A helpful tool for this is the STEP Calendar which was presented by the previous International Board .

Mirko DjukovicVP STEPELSA International

�0 SynErgymagazine �1

I came to Skopje full of expectations, but reality was much better. In the end of one month there, my heart was full of new great friendships, ELSA Balkan spirit and con-nection to Macedonia for rest of my life!

A STEP placement in the FYR of Macedonia was an outstand-ing opportunity, providing me with an excellent and valuable insight into high standard foreign law services and new chance to work in an international dimension. I am a real cosmopolitan and interested in the law of the European Union, so I was pleased to work in the Government of the Republic of Macedonia – Sec-retariat for European Affairs.

I had various chances to see the Macedonian effort to join the Eu-ropean Union, but my main task in the Department of European integration was doing huge research to comprise the benchmarks assigned to the country until the beginning of negotiations about EU membership. My work was related to EU law, which I really appreciated and it was a huge challenge in according to my law degree. It was a unique opportunity to implement my EU knowl-

STEP Testimonial

Traineeship in Macedonian wayI was a very active ELSA member in the STEP area and I had gone through all levels in ELSA – from local to international. I can say that STEP was my life-style during the last four years, but I saw it just from one side – as a STEP officer. So I decided to taste the experience to be a STEP trainee as well…

edge , what I consider the best source of experience. The working environment of the government was very nice. My mentor Mr. Riste Jurukovski was a very friendly and highly educated person, who provided me all the information I needed, even concerning the attractions and details about the city.

I can honestly say - to apply for a traineeship in FYR of Macedo-nia was one of the best decisions in my life! Martina Smilevska – VP STEP of ELSA Republic of Macedonia took care of me like a princess and thanks to her and her STEP team I spent a won-derful month in this beautiful country. The Macedonians are very kind, helpful and open-minded and they involved me in all social activities, events and trips. During my month I visited a couple of concerts and festivals, revolution city Krusevo and one of the most beautiful and historical city in the world – Ohrid. I had the opportunity to visit the untouched nature near Lake Matka and hike to the mountain Vodno.

Thanks to this traineeship I got a great introduction into the Macedonian culture and history, I improved my skills of EU law, I saw a lot of wonderful things and met new international friends. I would like to express my gratitude to the whole team of ELSA Republic of Macedonia for their great job!

STEP is a huge international experience and I fully recommend it! The Student Trainee Exchange Programme in combination with Macedonian friendly characters was just perfect.

Lucia Pálušová Director for STEP ELSA International 2007/2008

Student Trainee Exchange Programme

Founded in 1991, ELS - The ELSA Lawyers Society is the international alumni association of ELSA. ELS offers its currently almost 600 members a natural continuation of ELSA upon graduation, but tailored to "postgraduate" interests, time constraints and budget. The aims of ELS were expressed in the Statutes as follows:

Recalling that the aim of ELS is to bring together lawyers and other members all over Europe who have been part of or who have supported the ELSA network and structure or who wish to do so now and in the future; to enhance the exchange of knowledge and experiences and to create and maintain personal contacts amongst lawyers in Europe

Would you like to join us?

www.elslawyer.org

"The basis for the existence of ELS is the association from which we originated and to which we dedicate our support"

Student Trainee Exchange Programme

�2 SynErgymagazine ��

Membership of ELSA UK had lapsed, leaving the country without a role in the prestigious network of 30,000 students across 36 countries, until the efforts of an initiator group consisting of students from the Universities of Chester,

Glasgow, Bristol and City London launched a determined cam-paign for ELSA UK to be reinstated. The first thing that comes to mind when you hear the name 'ELSA UK', is its troubled past and the course of events that eventually led to the group being excluded from the network for the time being. For many students studying law in the UK it was a great shame that the opportunities ELSA gives had slipped from their grasp. Yet there were those who made it their year-long ambition to re-establish the United Kingdom as an observer of ELSA. This is my proud story of the rebirth of ELSA United Kingdom. In February 2009 I attended a meeting in London with two mem-bers of the ELSA International Board, Antti Husa and Morten Rydningen, with a sole aim in mind – the re-establishment of ELSA UK. I travelled with Wojtek Kolodziejczak (President of ELSA UK), a friend and fellow student at the University of Ches-ter, and was extremely nervous about the meeting. I knew from the research we had made before attending the meeting that the previous UK network had suffered problems and to be complete-ly honest, I wasn’t sure how things would turn out. During the six-hour-long meeting it was eventually agreed that all students

present would create a ‘UK initiator group’, and through huge effort send a UK representative to the ICM in Montenegro – a mere two months away.

Although that was challenging enough because we were an un-heard group of students searching for funding for the ICM, we also had the colossal task of creating a statute for our proposed network and putting forth plans regarding what we genuinely sought to achieve within the first year if we were successful. We came up against many problems but together we gritted our teeth, dug our heels into the ground and pushed to overcome all obstacles and issues.

Wojtek travelled to the ICM in April of this year with a huge weight on his shoulders. I will never forget the date April 4th

ELSA in the United Kingdom

Towards a brighter futureAfter some years of struggle ELSA UK is yet again a proud member of our network

Network Activity

but we are well on our way to achieving our goals. As John Len-non famously said “A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality”. Plans for the forthcoming year we hope will include a seminar on the erosion of human rights in the UK because of anti-ter-ror legislation and its affects on the UK’s constitution, a seminar regarding equality in the House of Lords (soon to become the Supreme Court of England and Wales), a slow but steady growth of the UK’s STEP programme, training exercises, moot competi-tions, and study trips which will enable law students through-out Europe to test themselves and learn with some of the UK’s brightest legal minds.

2009, for it was the day ELSA UK was unanimously elected and re-established against all odds. We were so proud of the achieve-ments with such a tight deadline. However, the jubilation did not last for long as we had some serious work to do in the establish-ment of the National Board for the development of the ELSA UK network.

The first National Board of the ‘reborn’ ELSA UK network was established on June 3rd in the presence of Morten Rydningen and it was an ecliptic day for all of us with plenty of entertainment for the after party! I was nominated and voted in as Vice President of Marketing due to my efforts of ascertaining sponsorship for the trip to the ICM in Montenegro. To say I feel privileged and proud to represent my country in Europe is an understatement. We now have a dedicated, like-minded National Board that is collectively working towards the solid foundation of our network for years to come. The fruits of our labour are already evident. Within two months, membership for ELSA UK has risen to ap-proximately 150 students across four local groups and is con-stantly growing. We still have a lot of hard work to do of course,

Network Activity

Laithe Jajeh VP Marketing ELSA UK

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�4 SynErgymagazine �5

and leadership skills which will be crucially important in their later careers. Since international moot court competitions always oper-ate in one or a couple of languages only, most teams have to work in a foreign language, which is another powerful source of learn-ing (the native speakers forego this learning opportunity, but they of course also have an advantage in the competition). Finally, the perhaps most pleasant aspect of the students’ participation in an international moot court competition is the opportunity to travel to a regional final or maybe also to the big final round where they meet in person (and later party with) teams from other universities and countries, as well as the panelists. For the students, the partici-pation in a moot court competition is a huge investment of time resources that comes on top of a normally already full curricular schedule. The participants therefore deserve a lot of credit for their readiness to take on such a big task. It is however also important to say that this investment, for the reasons mentioned above, pays off multiple times. I have never seen a team or students who regretted having participated in the moot court, but I have seen many teams and students who said that it was one of the best experiences of their lives, both in terms of what they learnt and in terms of the fun they had.

For me as a WTO legal practitioner with a strong academic in-clination (I teach and I write scholarly papers on WTO law), the moot court competition is a very precious opportunity to make a small contribution to the enormous success of the EMC2. One of the effects of that competition is that it spreads interest in and knowledge of WTO law among university students in both devel-oped and developing countries, which is in the WTO’s and the European Union’s interest from an official perspective, and for me also a personal pedagogic vocation. In other words, the EMC2 serves a very useful purpose of capacity building. With nearly 100 universities worldwide participating, this impact is broader, deeper and more sustained than any of the typically expensive technical assistance initiatives can ever hope to be.

Each year’s case, which is typically written by an eminent WTO scholar, deals with a different sub-area of WTO law, normally a topic that is at the very forefront of WTO law and jurisprudence. This allows me to either learn quite a lot about a part of WTO law I was not yet overly familiar with, or to deepen my understanding and refine my reflections about a legal area I thought I was already very familiar with. My participation as a panelist is also an op-portunity to meet (again) other WTO professionals with similar legal interests. This allows me to exchange thoughts about the case as well as other questions of WTO law in a more informal set-ting than a formal professional encounter would permit. While the final oral round of the competition brings together the largest group of eminent WTO legal experts, I equally have been enjoying participating in regional finals, which tend to be more focused and intensive. Many of the fellow panelists have become friends over the years and it is each year a big pleasure to see them again, just like it is great to meet the participating students from all over the world, as well as the board members of ELSA International (who are always people with impressive personalities and leadership and organisational skills) as well as the other organisers of the competi-tion, in particular the crucially important academic supervisors.

The ELSA Moot Court’s organisers have every year been doing fantastic, not always easy, and certainly enormous work at run-ning the competition which has enjoyed a steady growth over the years in terms of participating teams, and includes an impressive number of teams from nearly all continents of the world. ELSA International can be very proud of what it has achieved. For the study and knowledge of WTO law, for the values which the WTO stands for, for a practice-oriented legal education, and for interna-tional exchange and understanding among the future generations of lawyers. All those who support the competition, be it as spon-sors, as WTO Secretariat, or as panelists, therefore have a lot of good reasons for doing so.

Moot court competitions have tradition-ally existed in law faculties of Anglo-Saxon countries as part of the legal education. Students play the role of opposing parties before a (national) judiciary in a fictitious lawsuit, the facts of which are previously

established in a case of up to several pages. The participants in a moot court normally form teams and prepare both written submis-sions and an oral presentation to the fictitious tribunal. This model was then followed in several international legal disciplines, with the aim of allowing teams from different universities and countries to compete with another in a rather extra-curricular activity.

The EMC2 is one of the youngest of these international competi-tions, and it has been a remarkable success, of which especially the initiators and organisers, but also the other participants have every reason to be proud of. Myself being a WTO lawyer only for a couple of years longer than the existence of the EMC2 (working first for the WTO in Geneva and now for the European Commis-sion in Brussels), I have been privileged to participate as a panelist in the competition since its inception (i.e. as a judge – the first instance tribunals of the WTO are called panels). Compared to the organisers and participants of the EMC2, the panelists do not play the most important role, but they are still central because a moot court competition needs people who grade the teams’ writ-ten submissions and oral presentations, who guide and add spice to the debate that takes place before the panels and who ultimately decide who wins. The more engaging and knowledgeable in WTO law these panelists are, the better it is for the whole competition, including for its academic level, which consistently has been im-pressively high.

There are several aspects that make an international moot court competition in general, and the EMC2 in particular, a uniquely precious event. From an educational perspective, a student’s par-ticipation in a moot court is a highly valuable addition to and variation from the (for good reasons) dominant form of learning through scientific study in the form of reading, listening and dis-cussing. The advocacy and legal defence of a party’s case in front of a fictitious tribunal allows students to train their rhetoric and argumentation skills in the partial role which is typical for the sub-sequent professional work of most lawyers. The intensive exposure to the case of the competition further allows the participants to ac-quire an intimate understanding of a specific part of a legal area, in this case WTO law, and a fairly solid understanding of the general features of that legal area, which they previously in most cases were unfamiliar with. They engage in this exercise in teams in which they divide the work, coordinate and cooperate, both in the preparation of the written documents and in the oral presentation before the tribunal. This allows the participants to learn and refine teamwork

ELSA Moot Court Competition on WTO Law (EMC2)

Facing the Global ChallengeEvery year since the academic year 2002/03, i.e. seven times by now, ELSA International has been organising a moot court competition in the law of the World Trade Organization (WTO) – EMC2.

Moot Court Competition Moot Court Competition

Lothar EhringPanelistEMC2

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The realization of these objectives was permitted thanks to the great variety of the participants' nationalities: of the twelve teams, in fact, ten of them came from different nations; going from USA to Russia passing through United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Sweden, Estonia, Germany, Poland, Austria and Bulgaria.

The prestigious composition of the judging panel ensured a high level scientific profile of the event. All the judges were, in fact, partners of important international legal studies, academics of clear fame, representatives of the EU institutions and members of the Court of Justice. Just to mention some names we will re-member: Prof. Massimo Iovane (Professor of International Law); Prof. Roberto Mastroianni (Professor of European Union Law) and Prof. Giuseppe Tesauro (Judge of the Constitutional Court of the Italian Republic).

The manifestation was opened on Thursday the 5th of March with a welcome cocktail at the beautiful Hotel Palazzo Alabar-dieri. An important mark up was given by the participation of the Avv. Francesco Caia, president of the Council of Lawyers of Naples, who expressed his happiness and approval for this event, considering the important role that it plays in the formation of a young lawyer and evidencing the role of necessary match that the lawyer plays between the citizen and the state jurisdiction.

Moot Court Competition

From the 5th to 8th of March 2009, ELSA Napoli, in cooperation with the University of Naples, “Federico II”, hosted the Na-ples Regional Final of the ELMC, that has reached its twenty-second edition.

The ELMC is a traditional moot competition of international level, dedicated to problems of European law. Since 1988, the competition takes place annually and has been hosted by over 50 universities all around the world. Every year four Regional Fi-nals (which are, in fact, semifinals) are organized in four different Universities in Europe and North America. The locations change each year. In 2009 it was in: Boston (USA), Naples (Italy), Sofia (Bulgaria) and Bangor (Wales).

In each Regional Final twelve teams, selected on the basis of written submissions, compete to gain the qualification to the All European Final. This is the final round and it takes place in Lux-embourg, at the Court of Justice before judges from the Court of Justice and the Court of First Instance.

The Naples Regional Final has been a really important occasion of promotion and development of ELSA’s scopes and interests, such as valorization of the EU law knowledge, contribution for the law students to get legal education and to be internationally minded and professionally skilled, multilateral exchange and in-ternational contact; trying to concretize as good as possible the true ELSA Spirit.

European Law Moot Court Competition (ELMC)

Studying the European Union Law between fun and competitionELSA Napoli organized a four-day competition on the European Union’s Law; matching the important experience of a moot court with a great opportunity of multilateral exchange with Universities from all over Europe.

To organize this event ELSA Napoli acted under the omens of the ELMC Society. It is a society based in Portugal that is the “owner” of the ELMC. It organizes the ELMC by selecting the participant teams from the best universities of Europe and North America and keeping contacts with the Regional Organizing Committee, which provides the whole organization of the Regional Final.The Regional Organizing Committee was composed by ELSA Napoli with some external support, especially from the Depart-ment of International Law of the University “Federico II” of Na-ples.

For the whole event we used both English and French languages, but to balance the competition, in the evaluating parameters the judges considered, also, if the participants were or not native English\French speakers.

We truly hope that this Competition has been, according with the ELSA scopes, a concrete contribution for the promotion of the knowledge of the EU law and the legal education of the stu-dents; giving them not only an experience of study, but also an experience of life.

Moot Court Competition

In the days of Friday 6th and Saturday 7th the preliminary rounds and the final round took place with the victory of the Stockholm University team as best oral pleading; of the Law School of In-ternational University Audentes team (Estonia) as best written submission and of Maria Chiara Toniolo (Berlin team) as best Advocate General.

Of course the ELMC wasn’t only made up of study and institu-tional moments: an intense social program permitted the par-ticipants to meet and socialize with each other, discovering the real taste of Napoli’s life. The hotel was placed in the heart of the old town and nightlife. Things that permitted to enjoy the architectonical beauty and the great number of monuments of the area during daytime and, in the nights, to have parties and fun, letting ELSA Spirit rule. A particular mention goes to the Gala Ball of Saturday night, held in a special hall of the Hotel Palazzo Alabardieri, obtained from the restructuration of an old nunnery. Finally relaxed because of the end of the competition, we had a special karaoke moment: all the participants, divided by nationality, presented their nation singing a typical song: the best way to forget the tiredness of two long days of work and close the event in the funniest way possible!

Federico FuscoVP AAELSA Napoli

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�� SynErgymagazine ��

Zinaida: Study visit - part I

During the ICM in Nuremberg representa-tives of ELSA Czech Republic were one of the friendliest delegations in the whole Net-work and supported us greatly to become observers. They also offered us to organize a Bilateral Study Visit (BSV) between ELSA Georgia and ELSA Czech Republic. It was a little bit challenging for us because we didn’t have enough experience to organize such events, but on the other hand it was a great opportunity for us to gain experi-ence, international friends and to get acquainted with the Czech Legal System. We decided that we should take this challenge and organize a BSV and we finally decided upon this during the ICM in Budva, Montenegro. The BSV was planned to take place be-tween 17th and 30th August. First week of the BSV was held and hosted in Georgia and the second week in Czech Republic.

We had planned both an academic and a social program for our Czech and Slovak students to get acquainted with the legal sys-tem, beautiful nature and traditions of Georgia.

At the first day of the BSV, the participants visited the Tbilisi State University where the Principal gave lecture followed by a discussion about changing the legal system of Georgia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. After the lecture the initiative group made a presentation about the future of ELSA Tbilisi, why

it was important to create the local group, the aims of the local group and about future projects. This event and most of the study visit was broadcasted by the leading televi-sion companies in Georgia.

On the second day of the study visit the par-ticipants were welcomed at the Tbilisi City

Court by the chairman of the court Honorary Giorgi Shavliash-vili. Afterwards the chairman of the civil branch Honorary Irakli Adeishvili gave a lecture about IP law, copyrights, trademarks and the visit was finished by a spectacular tour of the whole court building. We finished the second day by visiting the international law firm DLA Piper and had a lecture about this law firm, fields of law it focuses on, about its structure, the international and na-tional clients and about the most notable former cases. Our del-egation also visited the partners of ELSA Georgia, VKM Ltd., the carriage building company which generously provided us with a beautiful salon carriage for overnight ride to Batumi at sea side, and Meatana Ltd. that sponsored us with various delicious meat products and gave us a tour to its factory.

During our stay in Batumi we visited the Constitutional Court of Georgia and had a short discussion with the President of the Constitutional Court Honorary Giorgi Papuashvili and the Judge Honorary Lali Papiashvili about the history and structure of the court. At the Batumi State University we were welcomed by the

ELSA Czech Republic and ELSA Georgia

Two intensive weeks in AugustBilateral Study Visits are one of the most important projects in ELSA that greatly contribute to achievement of our philosophical statement by improvement of legal education, fostering mutual understanding and promoting social responsibility of law students and young lawyers. Let us present to you one of the most chal-lenging and most important projects of ELSA Czech Republic and ELSA Georgia.

Study Visit

Zuzana Kohutova S&C Team ELSA Prague

Zinaida Chkhaidze VP S&CELSA Georgia

Study Visit

Principal and by the Dean of the Law School. In Batumi we had a rest and enjoyed the beautiful seaside of Georgia, botanical gar-dens, Gonio Castle and Sarphi on the border of Turkey, where we attended the national holiday called lazoba.

After returning to Tbilisi we only had one day left in Georgia so we had a training on teambuilding with Kate Aleksidze, one of the founders and president of former ELSA Georgia, member of the former International Board and now ITP Trainer. After this training we were able to organize a tour around the Residence of Georgian President and in the afternoon we also visited Mt-skheta, the first capital of Georgia, with lots of ancient orthodox churches and beautiful sights and Gori, the birthplace of Stalin.

Bilateral Study Visit with ELSA Czech Republic was the first in-ternational project of ELSA Georgia. We did our best to show our guests the best of Georgia, its nature, traditions and legal system as much as it was possible within one week.

Zuzana: Study visit - part II

Do you save the best for last sometimes? This summer we decided to do so and reserved the last two weeks of August for a Bilateral Study Visit with ELSA Georgia.

It was Monday, 24th of August and the weather in Prague was as perfect as it could possibly be during this period of year. Our Czech delegation returned in the morning, and we were await-ing Georgian delegation im-patiently. At about 3 pm, they were finally there.

The first day passed very quickly due to our visitors´ exhaustion so we only man-aged to take a walk through the historical centre and have the opening dinner, a piece of typical Czech cuisine, already looking forward to the next day. We started it with a visit

to the Office for Personal Data Protection and after the lunch we continued to Kocián Šolc Balaštík, law firm where we stayed until the evening. The brief presentation of law firm itself, its work and cases seemed to catch our visitors´ attention. The Czech National Bank was a place we had planned to visit in the morning. After all these official meetings, where a flow of information was com-ing from all sides, the time came to have a little rest, and the best way for this appeared to be an hour spent on water bicycles on Wednesday afternoon, sailing near Charles bridge. After that, we were pleased to spend an hour discussing relations between Rus-sia and Georgia with a professor of our Law School, Mr. Pavel

Caban, who spe-cialises in interna-tional public law.

Meanwhile, par-ticipants of this

year’s ISMM were arriving to Prague and we took an advantage of this opportunity and joined them for a barbecue party in the evening for a while. But there was not much time left since we had to catch the midnight bus to Vienna! It was very tiring trip, but all of our new Georgian friends were very impressed by the beauty and architectural jewels of the Austrian capital. We ex-pected Friday morning to be very difficult, but it turned out that our worries were in vain.

The discussion with a professor of our Law School, Mr. Zdeněk Kühn, about judicial system in Georgia and Czech Republic, was very difficult to interrupt, and if we didn’t have to catch our train

to Pilsen, probably it would have lasted much longer. Af-ter two hours spent in train, we reached our destination and visited the famous Czech Brewery – Pilsner Urquell to take a look on the process of making beer. We spent the rest of Friday in Pilsen, tak-ing a walk through the city centre and having a long feast in the evening that everyone seemed to enjoy. Saturday was dedicated to attending the ISMM workshops, gift shopping and was finished by beautiful gala dinner in a small restaurant near Charles Bridge.

40 SynErgymagazine 41

Study Visit

One week passed by very quickly and we woke up on Sunday and had only last few hours before the flight. We summed up everything we experienced during the recent days and agreed that we all enjoyed it very much. A lot of new information, knowledge and experience but also great fun and new friendships that are strong enough to last forever, new point of view on Georgian and Czech culture, society, politics and many other issues, this all made our Bilateral Study Visit with Georgia really spe-cial for us. And we are already looking forward to meet again!

Dalibor Valincic, Attorney-at-law,Law Office Valincic, Zagreb,Graduate, LLM in Comparative andInternational Dispute Resolution

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presentation and promised to come to Novi Sad in a large number. After a beautiful day spent in the capital, which bears a great resemblance to our home town, they took us to the lakes – Bled and Bohinj. There are simply no words to describe the beauty of the landscape. In Slovenia they say that you are only two hours away from skiing in the mountains or swimming in the Adriatic Sea. A perfect country, don’t you think?In the coastal town of Koper we had an organised tour in the Regional Court. The President of the Court showed us the Court rooms and spoke about some of the current processes and about the cooperation established with the Court in Novi Sad.

A day before our return, we were back in Ljubljana, visiting the Museum of Slovene Police. This museum collects material on criminology in Slovenia and records from the Slovenian department of criminology. We were given a tour by Mrs. Biserka Debeljak,

who told about the various crimes, pointing on the evidences collected in connection to them.

On the 9th July it was the time to leave Ljubljana, say goodbye to our dear friends and thank them for being perfect hosts. We fell in love with this city, this country, these people and ELSA spirit!

Thank you ELSA Ljubljana, see you in November!

We arrived to Ljubljana on the 3rd July, after the 7-hour adventurous trip by a minivan. In the early morning, while we were still trying hard to put ourselves together, we were greeted with smiling faces holding a banner

saying “Dobrodošli” (Welcome) both in Cyrillic and Latin Serbian. We were knocked off our feet by the gesture.

On our first day in Slovenia our hosts organised a reception at Ljubljana’s Faculty of Law. A charming Prof. Janjez Kranjc, teaching Roman law, gave us a tour around this magnificent institution located in the centre of the peaceful city of Ljubljana. Prof. Kranjc told us about the history of the Faculty, about its significant role in the reformation of the legal system in the Republic of Slovenia, and about exchange programmes and common problems our Faculties are facing due to the implementation of the Bologna process. Later we used the opportunity to visit the ELSA office, where we were delighted to see walls full of charts, itineraries and plans. This led us to start a discussion about the projects being planned and realised. During the ELSA Alumni picnic, we gave a presentation on our upcoming conference in November, “ELSA EX-YU: Human Rights at the territory of Ex-Yugoslavia”. Our friends loved the

ELSA Novi Sad meets ELSA Ljubljana

Feeling Slovenia... Once compatriots, now barely even neighbours. However, after spending time with our Slovenian hosts, one had the feeling of being at home. The whole idea of a Study Visit was conceived at the Spring International Council Meeting in Budva. Those who have been to this event know that the best friendships are made there. After lovely seven days spent together, the Local Groups started planning on meeting again soon.

Study Visit

Ana Koprivica President ELSA Novi Sad

42 SynErgymagazine 4�

Dear friends, the International Council Meeting in Budva existed before it hap-pened.

In autumn 2007, on the ICM in Reggio di Calabria, you, dear friends, expressed your confidence, with no votes against, electing us for Host of spring ICM 2009. A year later, at the unforgettable autumn ICM in Nuremberg, after giv-ing you some major information about our vision of the spring ICM, you confirmed your confide. Proud to have your trust, from that moment on, we put in all our efforts, our strength and creativity to bring our ideas and your wishes to reality.

It was not a yellow brick road, easy to follow, inevitably leading to success. Everyone, who has organized a meeting, especially ICM, knows this. In addition, current economic circumstances resulted with difficulties in finding sponsors. We knocked on many doors and, fortunately, some of them were opened. With economic and material support of T-com, T-mobile, Rokšped Auto Center, Gov-ernment of Montenegro, University of Montenegro, Municipal-ity of Budva, CAZAS, Commercial Bank Budva and Agency for radio-diffusion we had the fundaments to build ideas on. While negotiating and looking for support, the Montenegrin part of the Organizing Committee had many meetings in the ELSA office. That is where the vision was defined, where the dreams were get-ting more precise shape and being brought closer to reality. At the same time we were actively communicating with the part of Or-ganizing Committee across the border. Great ideas, support and help were sent by using electronic communication from beauti-ful Novi Sad. Synergy of eighteen enthusiastic people, hundreds

of `maybe-we-should` and `perhaps-we-could` was bringing us closer to LV International Council Meeting. Sheets, applications, tables, requests for sponsorships, plans, templates, innumerous questions, supersonic replies, calls, seat reservations, getting up early, staying up late, happiness, anxiety, enthusiasm, thoughts, words, ideas, were mosaically put together in the memorable pic-ture of how it feels to be in an Organizing Committee. I should, hereby, mention how much it meant for us that we had your sup-port through all of this.

Organisers as well as participants and guests were fully aware of the importance of this meeting. Every International Coun-cil Meeting is crucially important for the development of ELSA and updating it to new circumstances. Even at the airports, while waiting to be transported to the hotel, some devoted participants were going through working materials, in order to be well-pre-pared for workshops, so that the five-year strategic plan, made

LV International Council Meeting in Budva

Montenegrin ICMphonyIn the spring of 2009, more precisely from March 29th until April 5th, the 55th International Council Meeting took place in Budva. The event was organized by ELSA Montenegro in cooperation with ELSA Serbia and gath-ered 256 participants from 36 European countries to the beautiful ambience of the four-star hotel - Bellevue.

International Council Meeting

Miona Boricic Secretary GeneralELSA Montenegro

in Lisbon, could be properly executed. This meeting had a spe-cial value and importance for ELSA, because a new International Board was supposed to be elected. Eight ELSAmbitious people were hoping to get a chance to be part of the highly-responsible coordinative group, ELSA International. Because of active team-work, beforehand preparation, cooperation and quality synergy on workshops, useful decisions were made. On the other side, candidates for IB were very well verbally and materially prepared, with a firm recommendation in the past activity, which made it hard for all of us to make a decision who to vote for. In the end, we applauded to Leo, Amanda, Mirko, Timo, Peter and Sofia. Afterwards, the great team got another precious co-worker – Frida. Good luck, IB 2009/2010!

Apart from this, it was an honour and a pleasure to welcome four new National Groups. ELSA Bosnia and Herzegovina, ELSA Luxembourg, ELSA Armenia and ELSA United Kingdom, congratulations!

On this ICM, we, as organisers, wanted to put a fo-cus on the matter of human rights and fundamental freedoms. They are primary foundations and irreplace-able pillars that sustain democracy in the modern world. Likewise, Council of Europe is the Human Rights’ part-ner of ELSA, so we considered this a way to strengthen the links between us, as partners, and, as well, to main-tain a reputation of a conscious, socially aware students’ association. Our major intention was to bring awareness to the problems in relation to these matters, to bring eminent professors that would give lectures and realize active discussions on different topics, such as prohibition of slavery and forced slavery, right to education, minority rights, right to life, freedom of expression, prohibition of torture, right to privacy and family life. Believing in ourselves as young people with wealthy and internationally oriented minds, we, indeed, were involved in round-table dis-cussions. Exchange for change – exchange of perspectives, ideas, opinions, about and for the changes we want to see, changes we need to make.

Participants also had a chance to enjoy the beauties of this South-ern European country. To be dazed by the salty fragrance of spring on Montenegrin coast in Budva; to delight in walking through the passages of the old town Kotor, where lovers and warriors made history and memories; to bask in the coldish breeze in Ce-tinje; to admire enchanting, hypnotic beauty of Lovcen; to walk the streets of our capital city – Podgorica.

And on Thursday, 2nd of April, we were flawlessly glowing on the Gala Ball held in the modern ambience of the Queen of Montene-

gro hotel. It was an unforgettable night of wine and elegance.During every day, we were spicing all up with great, bonding, joyful moments near the pool, in the Pizzeria, on the balcony, in the hall, on the beach, and, in the end of the days, in Trocadero night club and on traditional Meds’ and Nordic parties. We all had an opportunity to enjoy amazing, breathtaking performances on the Elsa Vision Contest, where representatives of Italy,Turkey, Germany and many others showed us how unexpectedly great they could dance and how virtuously they could perform operas or, even, rap.

With every dance, embrace, a shared word, idea, plan, with every nostalgic and happy look, we were discreetly and unconsciously blurring the differences, prejudices and boundaries, making ’’a just world in which there is respect for human dignity and cul-tural diversity’’. I could responsibly and freely say that ELSA is a way of thinking. Perhaps, it bonded us more than any religion, political view or mutual hatred could ever do.

Although, allegedly, everything was forbidden, judging by all your comments we really made it a sea of law, sea of love. We were sharing good times and bad times, pausing reality. Report-edly, among all floors, the fifth was the best. Besides that, there were winners elected and charts made in all traditional Funergy categories (Thank you, Patrick).

For seven days we were carried by genuine ELSA spirit!

I, Miona Boričić, on behalf of OC ICM Budva (Mirko, Vlado, Dena, Bojan, Milena, Vanja, Maja, Milja, Maja V., Denisa, Djor-dje, Miloš, Ana, Danilo, Igor, Tijana V., Tijana R., Igor B.) would like to thank you all for coming, for laying trust upon us, for making those seven days the best they could be.

International Council Meeting

44 SynErgymagazine 45

Rule of Law is not only a legal concept but also has a major so-cial and cultural significance. It was born with the definition of state’s respect towards the norms preventing an arbitrary use of power. The necessity of respect-ing The Rule of Law and human rights is fundamental for build-ing and maintaining a democratic system. It is important for the society as it develops the culture of civil cohabitation and coop-eration.

Italy is a country where organized crime is strongly present and flourishing, there is no point in denying or diminishing the con-tent of such statement, as many politicians did in the past and sometimes still do. Moreover, contrary to the common opinion abroad and very often also in Italy, the issue is actual not only in the southern part of the country. The criminal organizations showed a significant capacity to influence the institutions and economic enterprises at any level throughout the years. Most of the huge amounts of money deriving from criminal activities per-formed in the south are then laundered through investments in companies and financiary operations in the richer north. On the other hand, the italian population is composed of a majority of honest persons suffering, at a different level, for this kind of status quo. Italy is also the homeland of renowned jurists, journalists

and judges that fought for funda-mental freedoms and the respect for the Rule of Law in some cases facing the ultimate sacrifice of be-ing killed because of their strug-gles for a just society. The most remembered and loved by people of them were Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, two pros-

ecutors that invented and implemented new investigative tech-niques to use against organized crime and successfully brought to justice many big bosses of Sicilian “Cosa Nostra”. Both were murdered with explosives within few months in 1992. Nowadays Roberto Saviano, a young journalist that gained worldwide fame, exposed the activities of the criminal organization controlling the region around Naples with his book “Gomorra”. The organiza-tion is in fact called Camorra. The book has been translated in a great number of languages, increasing its success throughout the world also because of the movie inspired by it. It is fundamental to understand that not only exceptional people are able to strug-gle against mafias. Every citizen, in every act of everyday life who is not bending himself to every kind of abuse is a fighter. The society only has the potential to defeat this spread and poisonous phenomenon by respecting the rules posed by the society itself and through behaviour inspired by the idea that standing up, avoiding any kind of shortcut is a valuable contribution to the creation of a just world.

ELSA Italy and ELSA Napoli:

ELSA and the Rule of LawOvercoming the formal boundaries of law, The Rule of Law has become a milestone idea in the spreading of democracy around the world within the last decades.

Legal Writing

Paolo Amorosa PresidentELSA Italy

Laura MarenghiVP MarketingELSA Italy

Alessandra ArfèVP S&CELSA Napoli

Indeed, social awareness and the culture of respect for rules are the keys to fight organized crime and its heinous consequences on the lives of people. Therefore, ELSA Italy, as a member of the civil society, wanting to take responsibility with regard to this fundamental task, planned and implemented the project called “ELSA & the Rule of Law”.

As examples of events territorially and culturally different within the “ELSA & the Rule of Law” project, we decided to describe the experience of 3 local groups showing fruitful and cooperative work. ELSA Napoli, ELSA Padova and ELSA Palermo offered their audience moments of high-level cultural interest.

For instance, ELSA Padova, thanks to the participation of Vit-torio Borraccetti, a prosecutor in Venice, had the ability to show how organised crime manifests itself with violence and murders which is of nature and origin exclusively southern. A clear exam-ple is “Mafia del Brenta” that was based in the north-east of the country. The ex-perience of the German journalist Petra Reski proves that organized crime acts and controls the life of individuals, lim-iting human rights, even such rights as the freedom of expression and the right to information which seems to be ir-relevant in respect of their interests and activities. Reski wrote a book investigat-ing the murder of six people performed in the German city of Duisburg as retal-iation between two families belonging to the Calabrian organization known as “’Ndrangheta”. She was not afraid of using names supporting her accusations with proof but her courage did not prevent her from being convicted for defamation at first instance.

ELSA Palermo, on the other hand, focused on more “familiar” aspects of the criminal phenomenon. The main conference of the event was enriched by the presence of academics, such as Anto-nio Scaglione, professor of criminal procedure, journalists and psychologists. Where Mafia’s killings, abuses and the most vio-lent manifestations happen, there is also a stronger awareness that crime poisoning our country is not something other than a phe-nomenon that crawls inconsciously in our everyday behaviours. Prof. Niccolò Mannino suggested in his lecture to confront and kill the mafia monster that is in any of us as the first step to finally destroy organized crime.

Also ELSA Napoli fruitfully cooperated in the project, organ-izing a study visit, including three days of academic program,

involving the groups of ELSA Munich, ELSA Frankfurt, ELSA Bratislava and ELSA Trnava. Between 27th and 29th of April, Napoli’s group offered conferences and cineforum meetings for their ELSA guests trying to originate dialogue between cultures towards an awareness of the fact that criminal organizations have precise territorial origin but also a wider possibility of develop-ment and growth. The most significant lecture was the one of the prosecutor Raffaello Magi who worked in one of the most important trials in the context of the struggle against “Camorra”, known as Spartacus, which was made widely known by the al-ready cited book by Roberto Saviano.

Rule of Law means guarantee, safeguard and respect of human rights in every socio-economic and cultural field. That is why ELSA Napoli also wanted to talk about a trial that questioned the exclusively capitalistic approach of our productive system. The prosecutor Raffaele Guariniello ordered the two former managers

of Eternit, Schmidheiny and De Cartier De Marchienne, to stand trial for al-leged negligence leading to hundreds of deaths linked to asbestos plants. The two were allegedly responsible for the death of some 2,000 workers and residents from asbestos-related diseases. Most of the cases occurred around an Eternit plant in Casale Monferrato, close to Tu-rin and Bagnoli, a quartier near Naples.

This is to demonstrate that the terri-tories in which criminal organizations were more easily created are the ones

where the State as a bulwark of culture and safeguard of human rights is absent, a State which is not vigilant in the labour field where there is a lack of legality, is one of the biggest causes at-tracting young people in adhering to a Mafia code of death and abuse.

As far as the promotion goes, ELSA Italy has worked successfully both in national and local level: in fact “ELSA & The Rule of law” has captured the attention of medias and maxima institu-tions; we have obtained some promotional pages in legal reviews, television's interviews and spaces in newspapers. Due to the im-portance of the event, “ELSA and Rule of law” was approved and supported by the President of the Republic, the Council of Ministries, the European Committee and the Ministry of Youth. The situation of crisis - not only economic - in which we are liv-ing, has given us the possibility to arrange a great manifestation hoping that it can improve our nation’s diffused social conscience and bring up ELSA vision.

Legal Writing

4� SynErgymagazine 4�

ELSA Vienna has been around for a very long time, but has been focused locally for the past few years. Last year’s board decided to take a step and change this – by organizing the first international conference since around ten years. In the following, we will describe how we got the idea of organizing an international conference and how we went about doing it.International Criminal Law is, in our opinion, a highly inter-esting subject that is promoted too scarcely. It is hard to find university courses in international criminal law, although it is a very important and exciting subject. This results in very mediocre knowledge of ICL among the public, including university stu-dents. All these reasons pushed us to select ICL as the topic of our planned event. Additionally, one board member had first-hand experience in the field of ICL, having completed an internship at the Interna-tional Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

The first step was to get in contact with somebody else who was going to be of great help – a criminal law professor who had just completed his term as ad-litem judge at the ICTY. Prof. Frank Höpfel was delighted by the idea that a student organization like ELSA was going to or-

ganize a conference, and was of imme-diate help. He jotted down a schedule, complete with the contents of work-shops, panels, etc., and advised us on whom to contact as speakers.In the local group we started to divide

tasks and contact partners. Some of us were determined to give the Vienna local group the international reputation it deserves, and to organize this conference as an international event from the start. We thought it was important to focus on the “big picture” at the outset of the planning process, and give our (rather ideal-istic) view of the organization of an event the needed fine-tun-ing afterwards. However, we met with considerable opposition in the group, as some members thought we weren’t ready to go international.

As the months passed, the conference fraction pushed ahead in its work, and we started getting positive feedback from partners. Finding financial backing for the event proved to be one of the hard-est parts of the whole organization in times of economic turmoil. This caused us to continually review the budget – a practice we would recommend to every organizing committee.

ELSA Vienna: Conference on International Criminal Law

Accomplishments, Challenges and Newest DevelopmentsFrom 29th - 30th of May 2009 ELSA Vienna, in cooperation with the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology at the University of Vienna, organised an international conference within the subject ofInternational Criminal Law.

Conference

Karolina Hyzova VP MarketingELSA Vienna

Christoph HauserVP S&CELSA Vienna

Our professor’s knowledge of the international criminal law scene turned out to be crucial to us in finding speakers for the event. In an event like the international conference, the speakers cre-ate the academic content to the whole project, so it is of utmost importance to find ones which are able to communicate well, and to deliver their message effectively to the participants and listeners. We managed to get in legal experts from the ICTY, the International Criminal Court, the OSCE, the Foreign Ministry of Austria and the University of Linz.

Some months before the conference, we recorded a promotional video for the event. This video was aired on YouTube and Face-book, and turned out to reach about 1000 views. This stresses the importance of marketing an event in every possible way and of using the available means of communication fully.

Another key factor which allowed us to reach interested potential participants was marketing the event through the mailing list of an academic organization which focuses on international rela-tions. Although this step was taken just a few weeks before the actual conference, it turned out to be pivotal in reaching further participants, and ones that were truly interested in the subject. This first little approach to the academic organization we con-tacted could turn out to be the start of a fruitful relationship, with a mutual exchange of interests and expertise.

Finally, the days of the conference came, and the hard work that had preceded it started to pay off. The top floor of the law school

Conference

at the University of Vienna became the scene of a well-attended panel discussion that was open to the public. On the following day the workshops took place simultaneously, and ended in a plenary, in which the workshop results were presented. ELSA In-ternational supported the event through the presence of Kamil Szymański, Vice President for Seminars & Conferences 08/09.

During the two-day event, students and professionals from vari-ous disciplines and countries had the chance to get to know each other and to interact. Viennese students were presented in the law school building with a conference organized by other stu-dents. This last detail seems incredible to our colleagues here, since students normally do not engage in extra-curricular activi-ties, and other academic organizations rarely organize events at the law school.

The thoroughly positive experience, along with the wholly posi-tive feedback we have gotten from participants leads us to think about aiming at making this conference an annual event. Vienna is a traditional venue for international get-togethers, and the University’s Criminal Law Department is happy to work with ELSA. These factors, along with an ever-growing local group, al-low us to look to the future with serenity. If we should repeat the conference, we hope it can exceed 2009’s results in terms of legal expertise, organization and social program.

We are looking forward to see you in Vienna!

4� SynErgymagazine 4�

I was a rather underdressed VP S&C of ELSA Sweden who left spring in Tilburg for a wintery Stockholm on an early Thursday morning in March this year. After months of preparation ELSA Sweden's annual Hu-

man rights conference was finally taking place. This year many things were different, first of all we had a completely new theme; "Civil Rights Litigation and European Law". Co-operating with a Swedish NGO called Centre for Justice we wanted to show the members real life examples of Human rights Court cases.

Since everything was pretty much new to everyone we started out smaller than the human rights conferences of previous years, at least in terms of duration and participants. Around 40 very mo-tivated and active law students spent two intense days listening to and scrutinising our lecturers. The former included representa-tives from all six Swedish Law Schools and international guest from 7 different countries.

My primary responsibility during the conference was making sure our overseas guests had a good time. Therefore Friday morning started early since I was supposed to pre-pare breakfast at the Hostel. An early bird participant made that job a lot easier and basically all I had to do was to make sure the kettle was go-ing strong. After a very nice morning meal the 8 of us set out to find the conference venue. Since Stockholm was about as new to me as to every-

one else that accompanied me, I was suprised to find the venue as quick as we did.

There was still a certain atmosphere of nervousness in the air, at least amongst us in the OC. Would we be able to pull it off? We certainly did. After a few adjustments in the schedule, Fri-day passed by very quickly. I was very pleased to see the intense discussions and active participation in everything from the influ-ence of the European Court of Human Rights to the boundaries between Hate Speech and freedom of expression. We were also shown a much appreciated lecture on how civil rights litigation could be transformed from a US context to the Swedish legal environment. The day ended as good as it had started, a very nice meal with very nice company from all over Europe.

Saturday was once again a very good conference day. The second day saw topics such as sex discrimination within the University admission system and the highly debated Swedish Signal Surveil-lance Act. The participants asked questions and gave their own

opinions and suggestions. People from different legal cultures didn't always agree but we all got to hear angles and points of view unknown to us before. In the end everyone seemed very satisfied with coming to Stockholm this weekend. Hopefully the word will have spread and ELSA Sweden can give you an even better event next year.

Public Interest Litigation

The Swedish styleThe 13th - 14th of March 2009 ELSA Sweden, in cooperation with the Centre of Justice, welcomed members from all over the Network to participate in a conference with the topic Civil rights litigation and European Law.

Conference

Andreas BålforsVP S&C ELSA Sweden

Have you ever thought what ELSA is for you? We are sure you have. And everybody will agree that ELSA is the best place to face your challenges, to get additional package of academic knowledge and to meet new best friends from all over Europe. It is a place where you can feel the hospitality and sincereness while being and working together. Nothing can show the most beautiful side of ELSA than an international meeting of the whole network. Only then you can feel real ELSA spirit and even more than that…

ELSA Lithuania has organized a few unforgettable International events and Summer Law Schools. But that was long time ago... And after a deep sleep ELSA Lithuania decided to wake up and organize the Summer Law School 2009, and to reach this goal despite the fact of economical crisis.

In cooperation with Mykolas Romeris University, the European Commission representation in Lithuania and a member of Eu-ropean Parliament Mr. Justas Paleckis we managed to organize it the best we could. 22 participants from United Kingdom, Po-land, Greece, Ukraine, Italy, Slovakia and Lithuania enjoyed a week of learning and having fun. The academic program consist-ed of more than 23 hours of lectures given by professionals from Lithuanian law firms, European Commission representation in Lithuania, Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Justice, Myko-las Romeris University, World Trade Organization and Düssel-dorf Institute for Foreign and Security Policy, and by an advocate and PhD candidate from Romania.

After the course the participants had a chance to test their knowl-edge in trade and environment law by taking part in an essay

competition. The winners were awarded by special prizes from the partner organizations and ELSA Lithuania. The Organizing Com-mittee did not forget to prepare a fun social program. We hope you will always remember the cozy social evenings full of laughter and

dances, our crazy Green party by the swimming pool and the extreme ecological trip to the adventure park.

For the organizers and for our guests this international experi-ence will be the greatest motivation to work with inspiration and passion for our association. That is why ELSA Lithuania outlined this goal - to organize an International Summer Law School, to invite our friends from the network, to show what ELSA spirit in Lithuanian way is and to gain legal knowledge in the field of trade law and environmental law. We hope that we reached this goal and you have experienced many nice and unforgettable mo-ments… Hope to see you all next summer!

Summer Law School

ELSA Lithuania Summer Law School – Trade and Environment

When everything is possible…The Summer Law School “Trade and Environment” took place in Vilnius from 26th July to 1st August 2009.

Juste BeloglovyteHead of OC

Linda PrakaiteVP S&CELSA Lithuania

50 SynErgymagazine 51

During this conference law students and young lawyers from Europe and Ukraine discussed the peculiarities of activities and functioning of the European Court of Hu-man Rights. The existence of this Court proves that national legal systems cannot

ensure full-fledged human rights protection in Europe. A great attention was paid to the situation with Human Rights protec-tion in Ukraine because Ukraine takes one of the first places by the number of applications to the ECHR. This Conference was held under the auspices of the Deputy Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Mrs Maud de Boer-Buquicchio.

Among speakers you could have met Tatyana Sveshnikova (a law-yer at the Registry of the European Court of Human Rights), Andriy Pavlovich Tolopilo (Assistant of the Minister of Internal Affairs in Odesa region in the Department of monitoring of Hu-man Rights observance, Master of Law), Mykola Ivanovich Pa-shkovskyy (Candidate of Law, Associated Professor of the Depart-ment of Criminal Procedure), Tatyana Oleksandrovna Antsupova (Candidate of Law, assistant professor of Department of EU Law and Comparative jurisprudence in Odessa National Academy of Law), Ahmad Khattak Iftikhar (Lawyer of the International Hu-man Rights Defence Committee, Member of the Law Union of Ukraine, LL.M), Natalya Leonidovna Scherbina (Main Specialist in the Secretariat of Governmental Commissioner on ECHR Af-fairs at the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine).

ELSA Ukraine, International Conference:

European Court of Human Rights: It’s Activity and AchievementsFrom 17th to 19th of April 2009 the Second International Conference in Odessa National Law Academy was held under the auspices of the Deputy Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Mrs. Maud de Boer-Buquicchio.

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As Iuryi Oborotov (Professor, Doctor of Legal Sciences, the Head of the Department of Theory of State and Law) said, the great amount of applications to the European Court of Human Rights is a reproach to the legal elite of Ukraine which cannot maintain law and order inside our country but adopts to the decisions of political, economical, military and bureaucratic elites which exist in Ukraine.

“After a few months or years these students will become prac-titioners and very likely they will cooperate with the European Court of Human Rights, represent the interests of applicants to the ECHR. If the education of young lawyers will be qualita-tive especially concerning European Convention and Human Rights protection, the quality of materials, which will be sent to the ECHR, will rise, that will simplify the work of the Court”, Tatyana Sveshnikova noted.

Natalya Scherbina proclaimed that participants did not take a superficial approach to the existence of the European Court of Human Rights and European Convention, but disclosed the problems which exist in connection with the implementation of the European Convention into national legislations.

The participants of the Conference discussed different problems which appear in the practice of the European Court of Human Rights. This event was important for the raise of legal culture of law students and young lawyers who shall build Europe where there will be real adherence of Human Rights.

It should be acknowledged that the Council of Europe sent the materials from Strasbourg which were distributed among par-ticipants and guests of the Conference. It were a lot of leaflets, posters, notepads, books etc. A number of European Conven-tions and a few Collections of cases of the European Court of Human Rights were granted by the Office of Council of Europe in Ukraine. The surplus of materials was distributed among De-partments of International Law, Comparative and European Law in Odessa National Law Academy and the Department of Inter-national Law in International Humanitarian University.

During the plenary session at the closure of the Conference all participants of the Conference received certificates and the best speakers were granted collections of the cases of the European Court of Human Rights. Besides, Leonid Cherniavskyi, Presi-

dent of ELSA Ukraine and the current President of ELSA International awarded the President of ELSA Odessa Iuryi Zhukovskyi the Diplo-ma of the Council of Europe for the commitment shown towards Human Rights when organizing the International Conference “Role of the In-ternational Court of Justice in Resolving Territorial Dis-putes” on the 18th – 19th of April 2008. Council of Eu-rope was very satisfied with the quality of work done.

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Inna IanovskaVP S&C 08/09ELSA Ukraine

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