The Dispute Resolution Special Interest Group (SIG) held its first face-to-face meeting on 19-20 February in Wiesbaden (Germany). The event was hosted by the EBS Law School – International University Wiesbaden and received special support of an ELI Member and the EBS Law School Professor Matthias Weller.

The two-day event focused on recent legal developments in Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), particularly in the context of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The meeting was chaired by one of the SIG’s temporary coordinators, ELI member, Professor Thomas Pfeiffer and the organiser of the event, Professor Matthias Weller. It also featured other prominent experts in the field: Alan Uzelac (Professor, Zagreb University), Elizabeth S. Stong (Honorable Judge, U.S. Bankruptcy Court), Valentin Rétornaz (Assitant Professor, Galatasaray University in Istanbul), Dulce Lopes (Lecturer, University of Coimbra), Rui Dias (Assistant Professor, University of Coimbra) and Participants of the Wiesbaden Dispute Resolution SIG meeting Bologna). The fruitful discussions resulted in the SIG’s decision to further develop the Group’s first endeavour in the area of ISDS and in the agreement on holding regular SIG meetings on a biannual basis.

The Principal Investigator, Marko Bratković and Juraj Brozović participated in international workshop in Maastricht from 17 to 18 February 2016. The topic of the workshop was “Overburdened Supreme Courts: Transplanting Solutions?" The idea was to compare problems, as well as solutions, in regard to the problem of huge caseload on supreme courts throughout the world. The Principal Investigator and Marko Bratković presented problems of Croatian Supreme Court.

The core group (the Principal Investigator, prof. van Rhee and prof. Silvestri) participated in the meeting of the ELI working group on obligations of parties, judges and lawyers in Colegio Borromeo, Pavia from 11 to 12 February 2016. The meeting was coorganized by Universita degli studi di Pavia.  

During the meeting, the working group continued their work on the drafting on the common European rules of civil procedure in regard to the obligations of parties and parties' representatives. The result was second draft of the Rules. This draft will be presented in Rome at April Steering Committee and Co-Reporters Joint Meeting. The working group also decided to hold the next meeting in Dubrovnik on 26-27 May, where explanatory comments to rules will be discussed. It was also decided to hold in principle another meeting in Paris, for the discussion of the French translation.

From 14 to 15 January 2016, the Pricipal Investigator participated in the Joint Project Meeting at Danube University Krems, Austria in regard to a project proposal in the field of international dispute resolution (arbitration, litigation, mediation, negotiation) which shall be submitted under the framework of Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education.

The agenda of the Meeting was as following:

1. Finalizing the specific roles of the university partners within the consortium

2. Finalizing the project activities and planned outcomes

- Phase 1 (inception phase & review phase)

- Phase 2 (conceptualization phase)

- Phase 3 (implementation phase)

3. Defining and distributing work-packages for the

- Student Level

- Research Level

- Legal Professionals Level

4. Finalizing the time frame (schedule)

The Principal Investigator, prof. dr. Uzelac, participated in the 5th International Conference on Law, Language and Discourse held in Örebro from 27 September to 1 October 2015. The theme of conference was Communication and Fairness in Legal Settings. The topic was discussed in plenary sessions and in workshops by scholars from different parts of the world and with different academic backgrounds. The official website of the conference can be found here.