IDENTIFYING NEW CHALLENGES for the RULE OF LAW
Join us on June 1st in Lodz to reflect on the rule of law in Europe and its contemporary challenges. We are looking to host an open dialogue on human rights methodologies and ways to measure their impact on the rule of law. We welcome an interdisciplinary, open dialogue among academics, judges, journalists, civil society actors, human rights practitioners, and all those concerned about mitigating challenges to the rule of law in Europe and beyond.
10:00 – 10:15 – Introduction and welcome
Dora Kostakopoulou, FRA Scientific Committee Chair
Izabela Florczak, University of Lodz, Faculty of Law and Administration, Vice-Dean for International Coperation
10:15 – 10: 35 Keynote address
Michael O’Flaherty, EU Agency for Fundamental Rights, Director
10:35 – 10:45 Introducing the background and agenda for this event
Joanna Kulesza, FRA Scientific Committee member / University of Lodz, Faculty of Law and Administration, Assistant Professor
10:45 – 11:45 Panel I: MEASURING HUMAN RIGHTS – key take aways from 2022 FRA SC conference
Anja Mihr, FRA Scientific Committee Member
Kieran Bradley, FRA Scientific Committee Member: The European Union and the Rule of Law
Siniša Zrinščak, FRA Scientific Committee Member: Democratic and Authoritarian Preferences: Empirical Trends and Unanswered Questions
Moderated Q&A / Francesco Palermo, FRA Scientific Committee Vice-Chair
11:45 – 12:00 – coffee break
12:00 – 13:00 Panel II: MEASURING THE IMPLEMENTATION OF MIGRANTS RIGHTS
Francois Crepeau, FRA Scientific Committee Member: Does the Rule of Law apply to migrants?
Jonas Grimheden, FRONTEX, Fundamental Rights Officer
Adriano Silvestri, EU Agency for Fundamental Rights, Head of Migration and Asylum Sector Justice, Digital and Migration Unit (remote)
Moderated Q&A / Dora Kostakopoulou, FRA Scientific Committee Chair
13:00 – 14:00 lunch buffet
14:00 – 15:00 Panel III: RULE OF LAW CHALLENGES AND HUMAN RIGHTS METRICS – REGIONAL PERSPECTIVES
Roman Wieruszewski, Polish Academy of Sciences, Full Professor
Mirosław Wróblewski, Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights, Head of Legal Department
Marcin Mrowicki, Warsaw University, Center for European Studies, Assistant Professor
Moderated Q&A / Anja Mihr, FRA Scientific Committee Member
15:00 – 15:15 – coffee break
15:15 – 16:15 – Panel IV: DIGITALISATION AND AI: A RULE OF LAW ISSUE?
Julia Laffranque, FRA Scientific Committee Member
Sylwia Wojtczak, University of Lodz, Faculty of Law and Administration, Full Professor
Jo Goodey, EU Agency for Fundamental Rights, Head of Justice, Digital and Migration Unit Justice, Digital and Migration Unit
Moderated Q&A / Joanna Kulesza, FRA Scientific Committee member / University of Lodz, Assistant Professor
16:15 – 16:30 Summary and wrap up
Dora Kostakopoulou, FRA Scientific Committee Chair
Joanna Kulesza, FRA Scientific Committee member / University of Lodz, Assistant Professor
Kieran Bradley is currently a judge of the Administrative Tribunals of the Inter-American Development Bank and the European Stability Mechanism, and chairman or member of the staff appeals bodies of a number of EU institutions and international organisations. He is also a member (and former vice-Chair) of the Scientific Committee of the European Union Fundamental Rights Agency. From 2011 to 2016, he was a judge of the Civil Service Tribunal of the European Union, and from 2016 to 2019, the Court’s Special Adviser on Brexit. He was formerly was a legal advisor, and latterly a Director, in the European Parliament’s legal service, and a référendaire with Advocate General Nial Fennelly at the European Court of Justice. He currently teaches postgraduate courses in European Union law at the Global School of Law (Catholic University of Portugal, Lisbon), the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the College of Europe (Bruges), and has taught and given occasional lectures at a large number of universities and institutes, including Harvard Law School and the University of Melbourne, as well as publishing widely. He is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Common Market Law Review and the CJEU correspondent for Law and Practice of International Courts and Tribunals. In 2016, he received a PhD from the University of Cambridge. [full bio/ColEurope]
François Crépeau is a Full Professor and the Hans & Tamar Oppenheimer Chair in Public International Law, at the Faculty of Law of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, as well as the Director of the McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism. He was a guest professor in several universities, including as the 2017- 2018 International Francqui Professor Chair at Université catholique de Louvain, and as the 2016-2017 Robert F. Drinan, S.J. Visiting Professor of Human Rights Chair at Georgetown University (Washington, DC). He was the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants between 2011 and 2017. He is a member of the Advisory Committee of the International Migration Initiative of the Open Society Foundations (NY). He is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Bureau for Children’s Rights (Montreal). He is a member of several editorial boards. He has taught many courses, including in Canadian constitutional law, Canadian rights and freedoms, public international law, international human rights law and international migration law. His research bears on migration policies and the human rights of migrants. He has given many conferences, published numerous articles, and written, edited or coedited eleven books, the most recent of which is: MAYER, Benoit, CRÉPEAU, François (eds.), Research Handbook on Climate Change, Migration and the Law, Cheltenham (UK): Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017. [full bio/McGill]
Izabela Florczak is a member of the European Lawyers Network for Workers (ELW) and the International Lawyers Assisting Workers Network (ILAWN), demonstrating her commitment to advocating for workers' rights on the international stage. Florczak serves as the Deputy Head of the Center for Migration Studies at the University of Lodz and has been the Disciplinary Spokesperson for Students at the university since 2016. Her research interests encompass the implications of artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies on the labor market, labor law, and social security. Therefore, she is an active member of the AI WORK TEAM, a research group dedicated to studying these areas. She also collaborates with the Section for Research on Immigration to Poland of the Committee on Migration Studies at the Polish Academy of Sciences and serves as an expert cooperating with the Analytical Migration Center at the Office for Foreigners. In addition to her academic and research contributions, Izabela is the Program Director of postgraduate studies on the legal and social aspects of foreigners' functioning in Poland.[full bio/UniLodz]
Joanna Goodey's areas of expertise with respect to the FRA’s work include: victims of crime; hate crime; trafficking in human beings; quantitative and qualitative research methodologies, including surveys.From the mid-1990s she held lectureships in criminology and criminal justice, first in the Law Faculty at the University of Sheffield and subsequently at the University of Leeds. She was a research fellow for two years at the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, and has been a consultant to the UN International Narcotics Control Board. She was also a regular study fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg. She studied criminology, as well as human geography, and is the author of the academic textbook ‘Victims and Victimology: Research, Policy and Practice’ (2005), and co-editor of the book, together with A. Crawford, on ‘Integrating a Victim Perspective within Criminal Justice: International Perspectives’ (2000). To date, she has published over thirty academic journal articles and book chapters. [full bio/FRA]
Jonas Grimheden joined Frontex as Head of Frontex’ independent fundamental rights office in June 2021. Before taking the position of Fundamental Rights Officer at Frontext, he worked at the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights for 12 years, where he focused on legal procedures, monitoring, and complaints mechanisms in various contexts. Prior to working for the EU, Jonas was a researcher and lecturer based at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (RWI) at Lund University in Sweden, where he was the Deputy Head of the Academic Department. Earlier, he worked for the RWI with human rights development cooperation, where he established and headed the first of the institute’s field offices in China (1999–2000). Jonas has been a Thunberg-scholar at Niigata, Nagoya and Waseda law schools in Japan; a visiting assistant professor at Cornell Law School and part-time visiting professor at the Chinese University of Political Science and Law, Beijing. In addition, he has edited books and written numerous articles in the areas of international, human rights, comparative, Chinese and EU law. He holds a iuris doctorate and has been a docent (associate professor) of international human rights law at Lund University since 2009. [full bio/FRONTEX]
Professor of European Union Law, European Integration and Public Policy at the University of Warwick, United Kingdom. Formerly, Professor in European Law and European Integration and Co-director of the Institute for the Study of Law, Economy and Global Governance at the University of Manchester (2005-2011), where SHE spent twelve years. Professor Kostakopoulou held a Jean Monnet Chair in European Law there, having previously been a Jean Monnet post-holder at the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom. Her background and work are interdisciplinary (Law and Politics) and throughout her career she has defended the principles of equal human dignity, nondiscrimination and inclusion. She authored Citizenship, Identity and Immigration in the European Union: Between Past and Future (2001), The Future Governance of Citizenship (2008), Institutional Constructivism in Social Sciences and Law (2018) and co-edited A Redefinition of Belonging? Language and Integration Tests in Europe (2010),The Reconceptualisation of European Union Citizenship (2014), The Human Face of the European Union (2016). [full bio]
assistant professor (tenured track), Department of Law and Administration and Director, Lodz Cyber Hub research center, Faculty of Law and Administration, University of Lodz, Poland. Kulesza is also currently serving as Vice-Chair for the At-Large Advisory Committee of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN ALAC). She is also an international law expert leading the cybersecurity due diligence work for the European and Chinese working group on the application of international law in cyberspace (EEC-IL) as well as for the Sino-European Cyber Dialogue (SECD), hosted by the EUISS, Geneva Center for Security Studies (GCSP) and the Hague Center for Security Studies (HCSS), respectively. She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of EU Cyber Direct, a project on European cyberdiplomacy, coordinated by the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS). On behalf of Lodz Cyber Hub, she represents UniLodz within the European Security and Defense College (ESDC, EAB.Cyber) and participates in the work of the UN Ad-Hoc Committee to develop a comprehensive international convention on counteracting the use of information and communication technologies for criminal purposes. [full bio/UniLodz]
Julia Laffranque is a former judge at the European Court of Human Rights, Vice-President of ll Section. Currently she serves as Director of programmes at the Academy of European Law ans is visiting professor of European law at the Tartu University, Estonia. Her previous positions include Justice of the Supreme Court of Estonia, European Union law expert, Head of EU law and foreign relations division and Deputy Secretary General of the Ministry of Justice. She holds a Doctor luris (PhD) of Law degree from the University of Tartu and LL.M from University of Münster, Germany. She has researched at the European University-lnstitute in Florence and held traineeships at the European Commissian Legal Service, Justice Ministries of France ,and Sweden Conseil d’Etat and Bundersverwaltungsgericht. Judge. Laffranque is author of a number af textbooks and articles on EU law, human rights and constitutional law. She has been president of the Consultative Council of European Judges of Council of Europe and president of the lnternational Federation for European Law. She was member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration. Julia Laffranque holds Estonian White Cross award and is Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Mérite of France. Ln 2013, European Movement Estonia elected her European of the Year. ln 2015, she created Theatre Club of European Court of Human Rights. [full bio/ERA]
Anja Mihr is founder and Program Director of the Center on Governance through Human Rights, at Humboldt-Viadrina Governance Platform in Berlin, Germany. She has held professorships at the Willy-Brandt School of Public Policy, Erfurt University, Germany and at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM), University of Utrecht, Netherlands. Anja has been Head of the Rule of Law department at The Hague Institute for Global Justice and carried out a number of Visiting Professorships for Human Rights such as at Peking University Law School in China and the Minerva Center for Human Rights at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She was Program Director for the European Master Degree in Human Rights and Democratization (E.MA) at the European InterUniversity Center for Human Rights in Venice (EIUC) in Italy. In her capacity as consultant for human rights and good governance she has worked for German Institute for Human Rights, the German Development Cooperation (GIZ), the Committee of Human Rights of the German Bundestag and to the German Foreign Ministry as well to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the European Union Parliament. Anja also served as Chair of Amnesty International Germany. [full bio]
Between 2012-2016, a lawyer at the Chancellery of the European Court of Human Rights. From 2016, chief specialist in the Criminal Law Team at the Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights. He obtained a Master 2 in human rights at the University of Strasbourg and completed a judicial apprenticeship completed with a judicial exam. His scientific interests focus on human rights in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union, as well as issues related to the implementation of EU law, the rule of law and European criminal law. Author of a blog on ECHR jurisprudence (www.eutryb.blogspot.fr). [full bio/UniWaw]
Michael O’Flaherty is Director of the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights. Previously, Michael O'Flaherty was Established Professor of Human Rights Law and Director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He has served as Chief Commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, Member of the UN Human Rights Committee and head of a number of UN Human Rights Field Operations. [full bio/FRA]
Professor for Comparative Public Law, Faculty of Law, University of Verona, Italy and Head of the Institute for Comparative Federalism, Eurac Research, Bolzano/Bozen, Italy (Full member / alternate Member). Former senior legal adviser to the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities; member, first vice-president and then president of the Advisory Committee under the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities; member of the Council of Europe’s Group of Experts on the European Charter of Local Self-Government, often EU or Council of Europe’s short term expert on issues related to multilingual administration, justice reform or minority rights in South-Eastern and Eastern Europe. Currently advising the Italian anti-discrimination authority on Roma issues. In these capacities, Professor Palermo monitored and analysed political and social developments as well as legislation and public policy affecting human rights. As an academic, he taught and published in various areas of fundamental rights in different languages from a comparative constitutional and public international law perspective. Main drafter of key documents on minority rights issued by the OSCE and the Council of Europe. [full bio/EURAC]
Adriano Silvestri’s areas of expertise with respect to the FRA’s work include international human rights and refugee law as well as the EU acquis relating to asylum, borders and immigration. Before joining the FRA he was at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), where he worked in the field for several years (Armenia, the Russian Federation and Austria) as well as at UNHCR headquarters. He worked on a wide range of activities, both legal as well as operational, relating to asylum, the protection of internally displaced persons and statelessness. He was involved in the development of UNHCR tools and guidelines, for example on the best interests of the child or on assessing protection gaps for internally displaced persons. He also worked for the World Wide Fund for Nature in the Altai-Sayan region. He studied law in Italy and international law in Geneva. [full bio/FRA]
Head of the Chair of constitutional law and human rights at the European School of Law and Administration, member of the Committee of Law Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Member of the Editorial Boards of: Polish quarterly “Legal Studies”, Anti – Discrimination Law Review and Constitutional Review. Retired professor of the Institute of Legal Studies of Polish Academy of Sciences, chair of the Poznan Human Rights Centre till December 2017, former vice-chairman of Scientific Council of the Institute of Legal Studies, member of the second term of the Scientific Committee of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency, former ad hoc judge of the European Court of Human Rights. From 1992 to 1995 Head of the Former Yugoslavia unit in the UN Centre for Human Rights in Geneva, from 1996 to 1998 Chief of Mission of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Field Operation in the Former Yugoslavia in Sarajevo, from 1998 to 2000 and from 2003 to 2006 Member of the UN Human Rights Committee (Vice-chairman from 2002 to 2004). Member of the Polish Refugee Board from 1999 to 2014. Visiting professor and lecturer at number of European and Polish Universities. Field of research: international protection of human rights, constitutional law, refugee law.[full bio/PHRC]
Sylwia Wojtczak is a lawyer, legal philosopher and legal theorist; PhD and dr hab., full professor, works at the University of Lodz, Poland. Her main research interests are legal axiology and the problem of legal cognition and reasoning. She is co-author and author of scientific papers and books, among others “The Metaphorical Engine of Legal Reasoning and Legal Interpretation” (C.H. Beck, Warszawa 2017). She was the principal investigator in the research project on the application of the cognitive theory of conceptual metaphor for analysing the legal language. Now she is the investigator in the research project concerning civil law of robotics and AI, financed by the National Science Centre, Poland. Most recently, together with Paweł Księżak she published "Toward a Conceptual Network for the Private Law of Artificial Intelligence". [full bio/UniLodz]
Attorney at law. He specializes in human rights law, rule of law, right to privacy, European Union law and certain aspects of new technologies law. From 2007 he works as a Director of the Constitutional, International and European Law Department in the Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights (the Ombudsman) in Warsaw. He served in the EU Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) between 2012 and 2017, being a member of the FRA Management Board and the Executive Board. From March 2019 he is a member of the board of European Network of National Human Rights Institutions (ENNHRI). Certified tutor of the Council of Europe HELP Program. From 2016 a member of the Committee for Human Rights in the National Bar Association of Attorneys at Law, as of 2022 a Chairman of that Committee. He is an author of 80 academic publications, including legal commentaries and handbooks. He is lecturing on the protection of fundamental rights, data protection and new technologies law. He is training lawyers at the Academy of European Law (ERA) since 2018. Expert in EU and other international research projects concerning human rights protection.
Professor and Head, Chair of Sociology, Faculty of Law, the University of Zagreb. Siniša Zrinščak obtained his doctoral degree in the sociology of religion at the University of Zagreb. His main scientific interests include religious and social policy changes in post-communism and European and comparative social policy. The position of minorities and the development of gender equality has been the focus of several research and articles. He served as President (2006-2014) and Vice-President (2001- 2006) of the ISORECEA (International Study of Religion in Central and Eastern Europe Association), Vice-President of the International Sociological Association RC 22 (2006-2014), President (2005-2007) and Vice-President (2007-2009, 2013- 2014) of the Croatian Sociological Association, Editor-in-chief of the Croatian Journal of Social Policy (2002-2009), General Secretary of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion (2013-2017), etc. He was involved in establishing the joint Ph.D. Programme on Human Rights, Society, and Multi-Level Governments by the University of Padua, the Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, the University of Western Sidney, the University of Nicosia, and the University of Zagreb – Faculty of Law, and is coordinator of this programme on behalf of the Faculty of Law. As a member of the European Network of Gender Equality, and the European Social Policy Network he (co)authored a number of reports in the field of social inclusion and gender. [full bio]
The conference is hosted at the University of Lodz, Faculty of Law and Administration at Kopcinskiego Street 8/12 in Lodz, Poland.
Air travel: Lodz Airport offers direct flights from i.e. Dublin, Brussels, Milan, and London.
Traveling from Warsaw: When arriving at Warsaw Okęcie airport consider a train ride to Lodz - the train schedule is here. A direct trip from Warsaw takes approx. 2 hours. The best way to arrive in Łódź from Warsaw by train is to take the train from Warsaw West Railway Station (Warszawa Zachodnia) to Łódź Fabryczna. The rate for train tickets, depending on the train selected might range from ca. 40 PLN to 70 PLN (ca. 8.62 EUR – 15 EUR). You can buy tickets directly on the train, online, or at the train station.
Getting around Lodz: Once in Lodz, you might consider a taxi or public transport. To plan your trip you can use this service. To travel around Łódź, you need to purchase tickets at the ticket machines, which are available at most public transportation stops and larger junctions. You can also buy tickets in buses and trams on board. Price list for single use tickets in Łódź: 20 minutes: 4,00 PLN; 40 minutes: 5,00 PLN; one day ticket: 16,00 PLN. The ticket has to be validated on board of the bus/tram. Official Lodz city website offers more useful tips.
Participation at the event is free of charge, however registration is much appreciated for on-site participants and necessary for those participating remotely.
Please register by May 28th, noon CET by scanning the QR code below or clicking here.
Certificates of participation are available upon request - please make sure you enter your complete data into the registration form and indicate your preference accordingly.
Arche Residence Hotel is a new comfortable apartment hotel just opposite the venue (10 mins walking distance)
Jana Matejki Street, 11 / +48 42 208 10 10 / recepcja@archeresidencelodz.pl
Other reliable hotels, within a 15/20 mins taxi ride from the venue include:
Vienna House by Wyndham Andel's Lodz Ogrodowa Street, 17 / +48-42-2791000
PURO Łódź Centrum Ogrodowa Street, 16 / +48 42 715 9000 / lodz@purohotel.pl
DoubleTree by Hilton Lakowa Street, 29 / +48 42 208 80 00 / lcjdl.res@hilton.com [use “FRA” upon registration for a 10% discount]
Novotel Lodz Centrum Pilsudskiego Avenue, 11a / +48 42 254 39 00 / lh7830@accor.com
IBIS Lodz Centrum Pilsudskiego Avenue, 11 / +48 42 638 67 00 / lH3096@accor.com
On the first day, an international conference was dedicated to contemporary challenges to the rule of law. Experts from Poland and abroad discussed topics such as human rights indicators and methodologies of their application. Dedicated panels focused on challenges to the rule of law, including migration and new technologies. The meeting was open to guests from Poland and abroad. The second day was devoted to the final closed working meeting of the FRA Scientific Committee ending its term.
The event in Lodz continued the dialogue on human rights methodologies initiated last year in Berlin and served as a summary of the five-year term of the current Scientific Committee. The conference was opened by the Director of FRA, Michael O'Flaherty. Among the panelists we hosted Professor Sylwia Wojtczak, Head of the Department of Legal Policy at the Faculty of Law and Administration, University of Lodz; Professor Julia Laffranque, former judge of the European Court of Human Rights and current Program Director of the Academy of European Law; Professor Francois Crepeau, former UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants from McGill University; and Dr Jonas Grimheden, Director of the Human Rights Department at the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex).
The conference aimed to initiate a discussion on human rights research methodologies in the context of contemporary challenges to the rule of law, such as migration and new technologies. The meeting provided a platform for the interdisciplinary exchange of views among academics, human rights practitioners, and lawyers, enabling shared reflection and discussion.
Thanks to the collaboration between Lodz Cyber Hub and the FRA Scientific Committee, the conference was successful and yielded valuable outcomes. By bringing together experts and stakeholders, the event contributed to expanding knowledge and developing practices related to measuring human rights in today's complex world.
Wydział Prawa i Administracji
Kopcińskiego 8/12, pokój 3.61
90-232 Łódź, Polska
lch@wpia.uni.lodz.pl
+48 42 635 63 78
