Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests, dear friends!
1. Three days of law and legal science, comparative and cross-border issues, presentations, discussions and above all, regional socializing - have passed in a moment. We have come to the end of an international conference entitled "Contemporary Legal Challenges: EU - Hungary - Croatia" (Osijek, 16-18 February 2012). It is the second international scientific conference within the framework of the Strengthening UNIversity Cooperation Osijek - Pécs project (SUNICOP; HUHR/1001/2.2.1) co-organized by the Faculty of Law of the J.J. Strossmayer University of Osijek and the Faculty of Law of the University of Pécs. This project is co-financed and supported by the European Union through the Hungary-Croatia IPA Cross-Border Co-operation Programme and by the two participating law faculties.
The first EUNICOP project was aimed at establishing the cooperation - year and a half ago we met in Pécs at the First (within this project) International Conference called "Cross-Border and EU Legal Issues: Hungary - Croatia". The cooperation is now being strengthened within the SUNICOP project. The latter is a one-year common research and curriculum development project prepared by the two cooperating and neighbouring faculties. The SUNICOP project is implemented in various interrelated areas and through various activities. Among other things, the project encompasses creating joint regional research in the field of law, sharing knowledge in specific cross-border issues, enhancing cooperative teaching activities and curricula development, exchange of good practice in tendering and project management, and promotion of joint results. These objectives are achieved through different activities: organization of common seminars and a summer school participated by Croatian and Hungarian students and joint research involving Croatian and Hungarian researchers. Organization of the "Contemporary Legal Challenges: EU - Hungary - Croatia" conference, at which the knowledge acquired from the above joint research can be shared, is yet another product of the activities envisaged by the SUNICOP project. It has successfully brought together researchers who deal with various fields of law. We have therefore gathered here in Osijek. Also, we are here to present the results of the joint research activities, to share the knowledge and experience on the changes that have recently occurred in each respective field of law, to outline and discuss the actual status of problems in specific areas of legal science and practice, to deepen our contacts and to foster our future cooperation.
One of the major SUNICOP project activities was creating a joint regional research area in the field of law. Here the emphasis was on joint research of Hungarian and Croatian scientists and for that purpose we have put great efforts into forming scientific pairs - researchers practicing in the same or similar field of law have thus worked together in preparing articles that otherwise could not have been produced by either of them individually! The success is here almost absolute! We have proudly enumerated 28 joint research papers as well as two individual and five guest papers, which leads us to a total of 74 members of both Croatian and Hungarian university teaching staff.
It is a special thrill to hear so many quality lectures and discussions held and participated by our young colleagues. The success of this project is a guarantee that the cooperation will not only continue but it will also grow! We want to share the experience of this wonderful cooperation with our Croatian colleagues and friends. It is our great pleasure to have had many distinguished law professors from Croatian Universities of Zagreb and Rijeka and from the Croatian Judicial Academy whose plenary session was cautiously listened to by all attendants.
Hearing as many lectures as possible, I can conclude that the conference has touched upon all fields of law. It would not be unfounded ambition if I believed that such wealth of ideas would in the end result in brilliant contributions and that our future conference book would be a true treasure! In order to attract the broadest possible audience who can benefit from the research results, the conference papers have been collected and will be published in one book in English and in two e-books in both Hungarian and Croatian, available at the website of the project (http://sunicop.eunicop.eu/index.php).
2. Ladies and gentlemen, let me now turn to a number of different topics we have heard in the past 3 days, almost in the headline form. We started with a plenary on the European Union and Member States after the Treaty of Lisbon, questioning the application of the national constitutional identity as a proper tool for Member States to retain their powers. In order to explore whether there have been significant developments in the national identity case law of the ECJ
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since the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, it was suggested that the general approach of the ECJ has not significantly changed and concluded that the main developments related to Article 4 of the TFEU have not taken place at the ECJ but in national arenas. The conference program proceeded with very practical analyses of the importance of lifelong judicial training with an emphasis on the general role of centres for education of judges and prosecutors, particularly in central and south-eastern European countries. A structure of the Croatian Judicial Academy and statistics of its projects and activities were presented. In the end, it was stressed that the sustainability, independence and necessity of the cooperation of judicial training institutions are crucial in the process of building trust in judiciary in the EU and this region.
The next EU Law panel contained four presentations. The first paper presented the organization and functioning of the European External Action Service (EEAS) established by the Treaty of Lisbon. The authors expressed different opinions on how the old external relations actors will coordinate their policies with the new Service and finally offered an early assessment of the possible future influence of the EEAS. The presentation on the legal nature of EU citizenship encompassed the ratio and evolution of EU citizenship, along with the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union. It was asserted that the Court has provided for a dynamic interpretation of EU citizenship and is gradually beginning to consider it as an autonomous point of reference in its legal argumentation. The topics referring to freedom of establishment in EU law revealed that the aim of the rules on freedom of establishment was to enable and to pursue mobility of undertakings in the internal market, though this positive endeavour is still facing many obstacles in practice. The famous CENTROS case presents the core of these difficulties which were, in the end, put into the Croatian and Hungarian context. The EU law block ended with topics on providing EU information in libraries. In this sphere, the authors indicated the UNESCO manifesto on public libraries as well as the Council of Europe/ EBLIDA guidelines on library legislation and policy in Europe. These "tools" represent a solid ground for both Hungary as a member state and Croatia as a candidate country, particularly with respect to utilization of libraries for providing reliable general and specific information on EU law and policies to academic personnel and to the general public.
The parallel panel on legal theory and legal history spanned tree presentations. The first one was an interesting and a very popular academic issue on legal culture, in which the authors evaluated the legal cultures of their countries, taking into account several indicators: written and living law, institutional infrastructure (system of courts, legal profession), legally relevant models of conduct (e.g. litigation) and legal consciousness.
Two historical topics catered for a valuable comparative approach. First we dealt with the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1918) that enabled emergence of new states: "the successor states". Its reflections on the Croatian and Hungarian statehood and legal status were explored. The subsequent historical topics deeply analyzed the influence of the Roman legal tradition on Hungarian and Croatian Law.
3. The second day of the conference involved two sessions and four panels. The point of departure of the first plenary session comprised the European Commission White Paper on European Governance (2001), which explicitly named seven principles of good governance deriving from the common European legal tradition (openness (transparency), participation, accountability, effectiveness, coherence, proportionality and subsidiarity). The presentation attracted attention with statistical figures and points of comparison on the Croatian and Hungarian practice in some of the aforementioned principles.
The two preceding parallel panels divided the audience. The constitutional block proceeded with constitutional dialogue issues, on the occasion of which the authors cherished the idea that the common law theories of (constitutional) dialogue can be examined and their conclusions adapted or further developed to non-common law constitutional democracies. Also, examples of constitutional dialogue at regulatory level from the recent Hungarian and Croatian constitutional development were given. The joint research on local self-governments focused on the main elements of the Croatian and Hungarian local self-government systems: the levels, the functioning and the organization of local bodies, with a special accent on the constitutional regulation. The panel ended with two tax-related topics dealing with personal income tax systems. The first study highlighted the notion of fairness in tax law: fairness is achieved when tax burdens are allocated fairly taking into account tax capacity. The other research focused on equity, emphasizing that shaping an optimal tax burden implies a search for a continuous balance.
The first presentation within the criminal law block presented the results of the research on participation of more persons in commitment of a criminal offence. It was suggested that provisions relating to particular forms of perpetration and complicity may serve as guidelines for formulating a general part of the European criminal law or for harmonizing national criminal law systems. The next, rather hot topics dealt with combating corruption in Hungary and Croatia, asserting that zero corruption alleged by the governments
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might easily lead to entanglement of governments' promises and to a quick and irreversible loss of their legitimacy! It was ascertained that reducing corruption to a minimum level means deeming the entire society as a victim of corruption. The panel further dealt with the legal aspects of criminal omissions. Having in mind that only in exceptional cases criminal law punishes omissions, the discussion was concentrated on one particular example - guarantor while the demands and expectations of the criminal guarantor's duties in Croatian criminal law were presented. The panel finished with a study on the models for the accusation process and the judicial control of indictment in common law and in continental legal systems, with special regard to the current Codes of Criminal Procedure of Hungary (2006) and Croatia (2008), respectively.
The third session began with a plenary lecture on the very recent development of the EU scene: the European Commission's proposal for the Regulation on a Common European Sales Law published on 11 October 2011. Focusing in detail not only on its general implications on European contract law but also on the implications of this optional instrument on European private international law, one can only check whether this Proposal is a final and proper tool in increasing smooth functioning of the internal market or this new layer of contractual provisions will in the end add more confusion into cross-border transactions in the EU?
The afternoon of the second day of the conference was reserved for, in broader terms, civil law. The first panel on civil law included three lectures. Topics on civil liability in cases of various hazardous operations offered a comparative insight into relevant Croatian and Hungarian legislation and later led to the recently very hot issue of the impact of environmental damages on the phenomenon that strict liability presuming liability without a proof of fault has been lately developing at a fast rate in this area. The audience was further occupied with inheritance issues, particularly with the main features of the Croatian and Hungarian laws regulating forced share. The overall intention was to compare the consequences which can be deduced from different systems. This panel was put to a close after a comparative family law lecture on differences and convergences between the Croatian and Hungarian matrimonial regimes. It seems that despite the basically similar regimes of the community of property, emerging from the common legal history influenced by the socialist era, today many points of departure among these two legal systems do exist.
The parallel panel on civil procedure and corporate law first discussed the perspective of public policy excuse in national and European private international and procedural law. It appears that the appertaining focus of attentions is nowadays shifting from traditional protection of the substantive and procedural grounding principles of forum towards protection of internationally established values. The participants then moved to mediation and peaceful settlement of disputes with a great, but partly unexploited potential for preventing and handling conflicts. Examples of conflict resolution in Croatian family and Hungarian labour law served as a platform to present the obstacles that hinder mediation. These examples were also applied to make recommendations on how to make the most of mediation in the future. The presentation on lawyers' fees and the length of civil litigation, with examples from Croatian and Hungarian law and practice, drew the attendants' attention with statistics that undoubtedly prove that there is a direct link among the length of procedure and its costs! The panel ceased with topics of common interest: corporate governance in INA, the only Croatian state-owned Oil Company, with a special emphasis on one tier and two tier board systems in Hungary and Croatia.
4. The third conference day was a true thrill for the end! In the morning of 18 February 2012, we all listened to very popular topics concerning a wide audience: providing cross-border healthcare services in the EU internal market. Although the new Directive 2011/24 of 9 March 2011 on the application of patients' rights in cross-border healthcare is aimed to establish rules for facilitating an access to safe and high-quality cross-border healthcare in the European Union and to ensure patient mobility in accordance with the principles established by the ECJ as well as to promote cooperation in healthcare between Member States, the authors singled out many problems that still remain unsolved at a national level. It came to a vivid discussion on procedural questions such as prior approval and justifiability of social rights.
Only two panels were to follow until the end of the conference at that point. The panel on citizens and human rights comprised four topics. The Human Rights Council, established in 2006, created an innovative universal periodic review (UPR) which enables complete monitoring of UN Member States in terms of human rights. Despite the potential this novel method has in promoting compliance with human rights, the speakers were of opinion that without a change in the attitudes of Member States, the Council is in no better position than its predecessor to truly facilitate compliance with human rights.
The Intriguing labour law specific presentation challenged the fact that the EU is an ageing society. The prohibition of age discrimination by Directive 2000/78/EC and special labour law regulations on older workers adopted in some Member States were laid down to deny that assertion. Still, a couple of judgements delivered by the ECJ in this field, such
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as those on compulsory retirement, are highly controversial since the economic reasons given collided with some principles on human rights. Environmental topics were left for the very end: the first presentation was all into the regional environmental imperative: the Danube strategy. This issue was soon followed by topics referring to environmental rights in the context of three legal systems. We have learnt that the role of the Court of Justice in enforcement of the third pillar of the Aarhus Convention (1998) at a national level is indispensable, despite the fact that the proposal for a mirror directive on access to justice in environmental matters has not been adopted by the EU Council and the European Parliament. The parallel panel employed an interdisciplinary approach to investigate the quality of higher education and student mobility. First the table discussed quality assurance being the core element of the reform of higher education and a basic requirement for creating a European Higher Education Area. In accordance with the recommendations of the Bologna Declaration, each educational institution is obliged to develop a system which will ensure the quality of its output. The researchers here conducted a survey of the perception of students about the quality of higher education at the Faculty of Law of Osijek and Pécs. The examination was to help higher education institutions shape a model that could monitor the quality of their operations by measuring perceptions of students in a reliable and proper way.
The programme went on with a topic concerning the international student market which is changing whereas managing student mobility is becoming more challenging. The researchers discussed the advantages and disadvantages of different survey methodologies used in measuring international student mobility. The study detected and confirmed the validity and reliability of the scales used in a quantitative survey conducted among students of the Faculty of Law of Osijek (in 2010) and among students of the Faculty of Law in Pecs (in 2011). The final research paper compared the perception of the students of the Faculty of Law of Osijek and those of the Faculty of Law of Pécs with respect to their satisfaction with the university services. This panel ended with a novelty of this year's cooperation: poster session. As part of a topic entitled "In and Outside the Framework of SUNICOF', five posters, jointly created by teachers and students from both cooperating faculties, were exhibited. The posters were respectively named as follows: "Erasmus mobility - Osijek - Pécs"; "From EUNICOP to SUNICOP"; "International Seminars - Cost & Benefits"; "Academic Added Value" and "Institutional Added Value".
5. Dear friends, it is obvious that we are facing the most difficult times as far as finance is concerned. Every segment of our society has been affected by this crisis, particularly the educational and scientific sector. One thing which often comes up when one has to deal with unprecedented difficulties is questioning oneself whether there are better ways to do what is to be done. There is still one advantage that we, academics, have in these difficult times and that is the possibility to create new research, work and teaching patterns of research, working and to offer new options in improving ways in which our legal system operates. What is certain is that we have no choice but to make a real change to the way we transfer knowledge! Human activities are becoming borderless and the role of the law in this area is to properly shape each activity. In order to govern the legal effects of globalization, cooperation has no alternative. Sharing experience between project partners can only contribute to the learning process. Such occasions can be used to discuss foreign models and adapt them to our domestic circumstances as well as to improve the legal certainty, predictability and efficiency of our legal system. These projects of cooperation between two neighbouring faculties represent a bridge to a new and improved way of teaching and conducting research and we are all honoured to have participated in these events!
6. In the end, ladies and gentlemen, please let me say a few thank you notes!
This project and this conference were, at their peak, so successful and joyful since many people dedicated their time and energy to accomplishment of their goals. I'm grateful to our lead beneficiary: prof. Tímea Drinóczi for trusting us and giving us a chance to be the host of this event, and to Ms Zita Cszászár for "golden" organizational tips! My closest companions, prof.dr.sc. Mario Vinkovič and dr.sc. Jelena Legčevič, have been here for us in all times, so I think that they deserve a great applause and sincere gratitude. Also, we could not have done it without the dean's support, prof.dr.sc. Igor Bojanič gave us unreserved backing. I'm grateful to the rector, prof.dr.sc. Gordana Kralik, for giving us permission to use these wonderful halls situated at the central University building. The organizational issues of the past days have been dealt with by student volunteers, so my honest thanks go to Endre Dudaą, Zrinka Gugič, Vjekoslav Mijič, Marko Sukačič and Maąa ©oątarko whose help has been really precious to us. In the end, I would like to express my appreciation to all of the participants, for making interesting and challenging presentations and discussions - it was an honour for the Faculty of Law of Osijek and myself personally to organize this event! Today I am standing here overwhelmed with the deepest gratitude for this wonderful cooperation between Pécs and Osijek Law Schools and I hope we will all be able to attend the 3[rd] jointly organized conference within the scope of a new project! ■
Lábjegyzetek:
[1] The author is Head of the Conference Organizational Committee.
Visszaugrás
