YUFE Law Conference in Bremen

First YUFE Law Conference and Second YUFE Law School Meeting at the University of Bremen was a Great Success

With more than 45 participants, the first YUFE Law Conference, which took place on 27 and 28 May 2021, was a great success. The general theme of the conference was “Informed Consent: Comparative Perspectives on Duties to Inform in EU and Member States Law”. “This was an experiment to bring together not only lawyers from so many different jurisdictions but also from so many different fields of law, and I am very happy that it was successful”, Prof. Dr. Gralf-Peter Calliess, Dean of the Faculty of Law, University of Bremen said.

Only seven months after the first YUFE students joined lectures at the Law Faculty of the University of Bremen virtually as part of the YUFE Student Journey, more than 45 researchers from the ten YUFE partner universities and guests joined the first YUFE Law Conference in Bremen. The conference hosted twelve research papers presented by researchers of the YUFE partner universities. Kept together by the general theme of informed consent, research papers on European, comparative, and national law, covering all kinds of topics from medical law and space law to consumer and investor protection law from a private, public, or criminal law perspective were presented. Thereby, consent as an expression of free will and its limits were discussed. In particular, it was shown that the behaviour economical concept of information overload, i.e. that a person can only process a limited number of information units at one time when making a decision, is not recognized by the roles of information duties in many fields of law. At the same time, it often seems to be an illusion that extensive information duties can overcome information asymmetry.

After the YUFE Law Conference, the deans and YUFE coordinators from the law faculties met to discuss the progress reached in the YUFE cooperation as well as the intended future developments. On the first day of the second YUFE Law School Meeting, the discussion focused on the developments at university level and ended with a reception by Dr. Claudia Schilling, Senator of Science and Justice of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, virtually in the townhall. During the reception, chocolate from Bremen and wine from the Ratskeller were “served”, which were sent to the participants in advance via mail.

On the second day of the YUFE Law School Meeting, the discussion of the deans and YUFE coordinators focused on the next steps to develop the YUFE cooperation between the faculties of law after the YUFE Law Conference on informed consent, which took place in the morning. “When we met last year in January in Maastricht, YUFE was a dream, but nothing had happened. But now we realise that many things happen and continue to happen”, was the comment of Prof. Dr. Agustín Parise, Associate Professor at the University of Maastricht after the presentation of the developments of the YUFE activities at the law faculties of the ten YUFE partners in the past 15 months. The third YUFE Law School Meeting and second YUFE Law Conference will be held at the University of Rijeka in May 2022.