Keynote Speakers

The Rule of Law, ‘Formal informality’ and the Governance of Migration in the EU

Paul James Cardwell is a Professor of Law at and a Vice Dean (Education) at The Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London. He was previously Professor of Law at Strathclyde and City, University of London, and Lecturer/Reader at Sheffield. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Europa Institute, Edinburgh, and has been a Visiting Professor at Bologna, Sciences Po (Grenoble and Paris) and Zagreb.

Professor Cardwell’s main research areas are EU External Relations and Migration. He has published three books, EU External Relations and Systems of Governance (Routledge, 2009), EU External Relations Law and Policy in the Post-Lisbon Era (Springer, 2011) and the Research Handbook on the Politics of EU Law (with M-P Granger, Elgar, 2020). He is completing a monograph on The Governance of External Migration in Europe (OUP, 2023). He has published on EU sanctions, democracy promotion and Brexit in European Law Review, Journal of European Public Policy, Journal of European Integration, European Foreign Affairs Review and International Migration.

He is the editor of JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies the leading academic journal in interdisciplinary European studies. He is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (PFHEA) with expertise in Erasmus+ and Study Abroad. He is a panel member for the Judicial Appointments Commission, was Treasurer of the University Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES) (2010-2016), and Deputy Chair of the Lord Chancellor's Advisory Committee for Justice (South Yorkshire/Humber) (2008-2018). He has contributed written evidence to Parliament on EU law.

The Dark Maze of Moralities in the European Single Judicial Area

Extraterritorial Crimes and Conflicting Jurisdictions within the EU with Unexpected Outcomes

Prof. Dr. Krisztina Karsai is a professor and head of the unit within the Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Science at the University of Szeged in Hungary. She teaches Hungarian, European, and international criminal law. She is editor and co-author of the Commentary on the Hungarian Criminal Code, and numerous study books on criminal law. She is an international expert in European and comparative criminal law and has authored over 70 publications on the integration of criminal justice systems in Europe. Prof. Karsai is frequently invited to lecture in these areas in Hungary and abroad (Germany, Italy, Spain, Romania, Turkey, and China). She was granted the doctor honoris causa title by the University of Oradea (Romania) in 2022. She has worked for many years as a member of the expert group of the Ministry of Justice (Hungary) to combat drug problems and prevent crime. She has been an independent expert of the European Commission since 2012 in the fields of justice, freedom and security (criminal justice, prevent and combat criminality). She has been granted the Jean Monnet Chair (2016-2019). As a project manager she led the Digicrimjus project (in cooperation with the University of Konstanz and Istanbul, 2020-2023) on how to educate law students on the digitalization challenges of the present times. She is the president of the Hungarian national group of the International Organisation of Penal Law (AIDP).

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.