Malta, 28-29 October 2010: Annual Conference on EU Migration Law – Judicial protection in refugee matters

In partnership with the Association of Councils of State and Supreme Administrative Jurisdictions of the European Union (ACA-Europe), the Academy of European Law (ERA, https://www.era.int) organised the Annual Conference on EU Migration Law on 28-29 October 2010 in Malta.

Almost 100 participants attended the event, which featured several presentations by speakers from a number of associations and fields (the ECJ, administrative courts and tribunals, judges hearing immigration and asylum cases, members of the Bar and so forth) and addressed the following topics:

• the case law of national and European courts on the question of qualification
• current issues concerning the Dublin system
• the role of the lawyer in refugee-law proceedings
• access to justice for refugees
• proposals on reforming existing EU instruments (the Qualification, Asylum Procedures and Reception Conditions directives).

At the conference, ACA-Europe's Secretary-General, Mr Yves Kreins (here in the center of the picture), explained how the DEC-NAT and Jurifast databases could be used to search national and European case law. Both tools can be accessed via the ACA-Europe website. Mr Serge Bodart, President of the Aliens Litigation Council of Belgium (here on the right on the picture), then went on to speak about the seminar to be held under the auspices of ACA-Europe on 17 December 2010 in Brussels as a follow-up to the conference.