Keynote Speakers

Legal Education for the Next Generation

Saša Zagorc is professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana, currently serving as dean of faculty. At the faculty, he teaches Constitutional law, European constitutional law, Election law and European human rights law courses. His keen interest in the development of advanced legal education standards reflects in the creation of several legal clinics and coaching of moot courts completion teams at the home university, in addition to the co-organization of the first sports law arbitration moot court ever. He collaborated in several national and European research projects, mostly on topics of immigration law, judicial independence and the application of the EU CFR. He often advises the national government and parliament on constitutional and ECHR matters. Throughout the career, he has exercised a variety of law-related functions (member of the Slovenian state election commission three terms, member of the UEFA legal committee three terms). Member of the Odysseus Network, a leading network of experts in immigration and asylum law in Europe. His latest contribution Freedom or Feardom of Expression of Judges? Exploring the ‘Chilling Effect’ on Judicial Speech (with M. Fajdiga) has been published recently in the European Constitutional Law Review.

Briefly, despite some doomsday propositions, in his keynote lecture professor Zagorc will argue that there is a future for legal education. He will try to sketch how goals of legal education change throughout the past and who will be a forthcoming role model in the legal curricula by assuming that artificial intelligence is a significant game changer in the field.

On-line Criminal Trials

Boban Misoski is a Full Professor in Criminal Procedure Law at the Faculty of Law – “Iustinianus Primus” at the University “Ss. Cyril and Methodius” in Skopje and he currently holds a position of a Vice-dean for Education. He has obtained his PhD in Criminal law in 2013 by defending his PhD thesis titled “Bail as a measure for successful conveyance of the Criminal Procedure” at the same Faculty of Law. Boban Misoski has published 3 co-authored university textbooks and more than 50 scientific articles. His primary research filed includes Effective and Efficient Criminal Procedure, Confiscation and Social Re-use of Confiscated Assets, Juvenile Justice, Illegal Firearms. He has performed research stays at leading Universities in Germany, USA and UK. Boban Misoski has been part of the Ministry of Justice’s work group for drafting of the Law on Criminal Procedure and is Head of the Ministry of Justice’s work group for drafting new Law on Management of Confiscated Assets.

Within his key note lecture professor Misoski will present the idea of on-line trials which was gradually maturing trough certain aspects of the criminal procedure such as the use of IT equipment for questioning of the vulnerable witnesses or witnesses with protected identity. This idea was propelled with the high number of adjourned court hearings as a result directly to the effects of the COVID-19 world pandemic have emerged as new possibility for improving the court processes or even was considered as possible solution for clearing of the elsewhere overburdened courts’ caseload. Hence, on-line criminal trials were even considered as effective and efficient replacement of the regular hearings with physical presence of the parties in the court room. However, this idea although seems as much useful for establishing effective and efficient criminal trials it appears to have far greater impact to the basic principles of the criminal procedure and tackles its essence, such as the basic theory of public hearings and justice served as a mean to general prevention of the society towards the crime. Hence, this possibility of holding on-line criminal trials will inevitably issue the re-examination of basic concepts of criminal trials and criminal justice as a whole. In this occasion the author examines the possible benefits and pitfalls of such new concept of the criminal trials and criminal justice.

European Health Data Space

Tomislav Sokol graduated from the University of Zagreb Faculty of Law and obtained his PhD in 2014 at KU Leuven on the topic of free movement of cross-border health care services in the European Union. He is an Assistant Professor at the Catholic University of Croatia where he teaches health law. Also, he has given guest lectures on different EU health topics at KU Leuven, Erasmus University Rotterdam and the University of Ljubljana. Sokol was an Assistant Minister of Science and Education in Croatia, as well as a Member of the Croatian Parliament. So far, he has published around 20 papers and 1 book on issues related to health in the context of EU law, including several articles in leading European journals, such as Common Market Law Review, European Law Review and the European Law Journal. Furthermore, Sokol is a member of the European Association of Health Law and part of the Jean Monnet Health Law & Policy Network. He is currently a Member of the European Parliament and the European People’s Party Coordinator in the Committee on Public Health (SANT). He is also a co-rapporteur on European Health Data Space and EPP shadow rapporteur on the revision of EU pharmaceutical legislation.

In his key note presentation he will point out the use of health data as one of the most important issues related to health care today. Optimal use of data can result in better and more efficient health care provision, but also lead to breakthroughs in development of new medical technologies and better policy-making, both on national and on the European level. Unfortunately, the full potential of enormous amounts of data generated in Europe on a daily basis is not realised to a large extent. The most important underlining causes of such a situation are the lack of common standards and interoperability between different EU Member States (but often also between health care providers within the same Member State), issues related to existing digital infrastructure and fragmented legal framework stemming from different interpretations of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) across the EU. To resolve this problem and unleash the full potential of health data, European Commission unveiled the Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the European Health Data Space in May 2022. The Proposal aims at enabling data subjects (patients) to take full control over their data and its use by health care professionals (primary use) while, at the same time, facilitating the use of data for other purposes such as research, innovation and policy-making (secondary use). The Proposal strives to create a completely new ecosystem for the use of health data, but leave important ambiguities on how to strike the right balance between the necessity to enable primary and secondary use of data on one side, with privacy protection and patient choice on the other. The presentation by the European Parliament co-rapporteur on this very important piece of legislation aims at setting the scene and propose concrete solutions on how to restore the said balance.