Dear ELI Fellows, ELI Observers and friends of the ELI,

2011 has been an exciting year for the European Law Institute. Both the opening in Paris and the inauguration of the Secretariat in Vienna have been important milestones for the new Institute. The year 2012 will be equally important as the new child will make its first visible steps and, like other children, it will continuously learn and make new friends. 

The success of the ELI has many mothers and fathers and we are proud to have such a broad membership base and a group of dedicated organisations which have been supportive from the very beginning. In fact, the ELI is not an office in Vienna but rather an open platform which needs to be used by the legal community to improve law making in Europe and globally.

We wish you a happy and healthy 2012 and we are looking forward to working with you in the next twelve months!

Kind regards

Tobias Schulte in den Bäumen

ELI Secretary General

The ELI Secretariat moved to its new office premises on 1st November 2011. To mark the occasion, and the formal opening of the ELI, a public presentation of the ELI, and of the work of the Secretariat, was made on 17 November 2011 in the presence and with the support of Viviane Reding, Vice-President of the European Commission and EU Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship.

Please click here for the full text of the European Commission press release.

You can also

• download the full text of Viviane Reding's speech
• download the programme and/or
• watch the livestream.

After the official opening of the Institute, the first ELI project workshop on the Proposal for a Common European Sales Law (CESL) took place on 17 and 18 November. You can find the programme for the workshop if you click here.

The Secretary General, Mr Tobias Schulte in den Bäumen, was appointed as from 1st November 2011. The contact details of the ELI Secretariat are: 

Since the Inaugural Congress on 1 June 2011, the ELI has received an overwhelming number of expressions of interest from colleagues from all over Europe to become a member of the ELI.

According to Article 8(2) of the ELI Statute, the ELI Council may either approach potential candidates for membership and invite their applications or consider applications submitted by candidates on their own initiative, provided they are supported by recommendations from two Fellows of the Association.

If you are interested in becoming a member of the ELI, please click here for further information.  

EU Commission, press release, 1 June 2011

The ELI Inaugural Congress took place in Paris on 1 June 2011. It was organised by Professor Bénédicte Fauvarque-Cosson, president of TEE.

An impressive number of distinguished speakers representing, inter alia, the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Court of Justice of the European Union, the European Court of Human Rights, the Association of the Councils of State and Supreme Administrative Jurisdictions of the European Union, the Network of the Presidents of the Supreme Judicial Courts of the European Union, the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE), the Council of the Notariats of the European Union (CNUE), the International Union of Judicial Officers (UIHJ), the International Academy of Comparative Law and a broad range of research institutes, academic networks, bars, judiciaries and further professional organisations, is proof of the strong support that ELI enjoys from the European legal community.

You can download the Congress programme as well as contributions by Louis Vogel, Michel Mercier, Martin Selmayr, Alain Lamassoure, Bénédicte Fauvarque-Cosson, Jean-Marc Sauvé, Irmgard Griss, Johan Gernandt, George Bermann, Sir Francis Jacobs, Rudolf Kaindl, Verica Trstenjak, Julia Iliopoulos-Strangas, Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, Marek Safjan, and Sjef van Erp. Please check against delivery. 

For a press release from the French Ministry of Justice, please click here.

At its first regular meeting in Paris on 31 May 2011, the ELI Council, by unanimous vote, elected Sir Francis Jacobs as President, Bénédicte Fauvarque-Cosson as Vice-President, Christiane Wendehorst as Treasurer and Snezhana Botusharova, Fabrizio Cafaggi, Spyridon Flogaitis and Johan Gernandt as ordinary members of the ELI Executive Committee.

There was a call for tenders concerning the ELI Secretariat's seat. Three bids were submitted by the deadline of 20 May 2011, namely by: the European University Institute in Florence; the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg; and the University of Vienna, Austria. The ELI Council, at its first regular meeting in Paris on 31 May 2011, decided by an absolute majority vote to accept the tender submitted by the University of Vienna.

The tender process covers an initial process of four years; in the course of the last of those four years a new tender process will take place in order to determine whether the Secretariat will continue to be located at the same place or whether it will move somewhere else.