In her opening speech, ELI President Christiane Wendehorst stated: ‘On behalf of the ELI I heartily welcome our Hungarian members and I am happy that we now have formally established the ELI Hungarian Hub. This will allow us to better integrate the Hungarian perspective into topical projects to improve the law across Europe’.

The conference, organised by the Faculty of Law at the ELTE University, with the support of the Hungarian Ministry of Justice, focused on the future relationship between the UK and the EU following Brexit. The keynote speech was delivered by Steven Peers, Professor at the School of Law, University of Essex (UK) and was followed by presentations from experts from the ELTE Law Faculty and other international universities. More than 100 participants followed the presentations on various legal issues such as judicial cooperation in criminal matters, free movement of people and international economic aspects like the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) importance, as well as on challenges related to Brexit which sparked much debate.

Wendehorst, who was accompanied by Chair of the ELI Membership Committee Walter Doralt, also had interesting discussions on the currently difficult legal situation in Hungary with János Bóka, State Secretary of the Ministry of Justice of Hungary and Zoltán Nemessányi, Deputy State Secretary for International Judicial Cooperation.