Hubs and SIGs play an important role in spreading the ELI’s mission across topics and borders where it might otherwise remain unknown.  On the occasion of the ELI Annual Conference and Meetings, which took place in Vienna from 4–6 September 2019, the Digital Law SIG, chaired by Alberto De Franceschi and Christoph Busch, the Italian Hub, chaired by Mario Comba and Riccardo de Caria, and the Spanish Hub, chaired by Carmen Jerez Delgado and Albert Ruda, won the Hub and SIG of the Year 2019 awards.  

ELI President Christiane Wendehorst congratulated the SIG and both Hubs for organising successful events and, in the case of the Digital Law SIG and Spanish Hub, for publishing the groups’ work in 2018 and 2019. The Digital Law SIG, the biggest ELI SIG, organised a handful of events in 2018 and 2019. Moreover, papers from their conference on the Digital Revolution: Data Protection, Artificial Intelligence, Smart Products, Blockchain Technology and Virtual Currencies were recently published in the book ‘Digital Revolution – New Challenges for Law’ with CH Beck. The SIG also won a significant amount of funding to initiate a joint project called the ‘Future Tech Law Clinics’, which will last three years and involve nearly 300 students from France, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland. The project aims at developing a new educational approach using law clinics culminating in moot courts, and schools, to raise students’ awareness about challenges that the technological revolution and fast-developing digitalisation pose to societies.  

The Italian Hub is the largest in the ELI. It (co-)organised the most number of events among Hubs in 2018 and 2019, including a Conference on European law for Italian lawyers and a seminar on the International Protection of Adults in the European Union. The Spanish Hub has been strong on publications, with the materials for its 2017 annual meeting having been published with sepin, a major legal publisher in Spain, and the ones for 2018 and 2019 being in sepin’s pipeline. The annual meetings bring together different legal professionals who discuss their papers that span a broad range of legal topics.