Sjef van Erp, Chair of the Jury, and John North, member of the Jury and representative of International Association of Independent Law Firms, ‘Interleges’, the sponsor of the Award, announced the winner on 7 September 2021 during a webinar organised within the framework of ELI’s Annual Conference 2021.

Paolo Mazzotti holds a Master’s degree in law from University of Trento, Italy, and is an LLM candidate at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. In his paper, he analyses the lack of sanctions in the ‘Trade and Sustainable Development Chapters’ (TDS Chapters) of the Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) which the EU concludes with Third Countries and argues in favour of them with a view to ensuring enforcement and enhancing the implementation of sustainability commitments in the EU’s FTAs.

The ELI Young Lawyers Award was officially launched at the 2016 Annual Conference and General Assembly. The goal of this award is to provide the young European legal community with a mechanism to propose practical suggestions for the improvement of European law, as a way of giving voice to future European legal experts and of helping ELI fulfil its core mission of improving the quality of European law. The award is supported by ELI and other appropriate participating institutions.

ELI is grateful to Interleges which has sponsored the Award for a fourth time and also wishes to extend its gratitude to the Jury comprised of the following experts:

• Sjef van Erp, Chair of the ELI Young Lawyers Award Jury, Professor emeritus of civil law and European private law at Maastricht University; former ELI Vice-President
• Weronika Banska, former President of the International Board of the European Law Students’ Association (ELSA)
• Walter Doralt, Professor at the University of Graz, former Chair of the ELI Membership Committee
• Tatjana Josipović, Professor of civil law at the University of Zagreb
• John North, member of the Executive Committee of Interleges
• Teresa Rodríguez de las Heras Ballell, Professor of commercial law at University Carlos III of Madrid
• Reinhard Zimmermann, Professor and Director of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, Speaker of the ELI Senate

The winning paper is available here.