Inaugural Conference of the Romanian Yearbook of International and European Law (RYIEL) on Central and Eastern Europe's Contribution to International Law [Hybrid, Timisoara; 14 October 2026]

The Romanian Yearbook of International and European Law (RYIEL) is holding its inaugural conference on Wednesday, 14 October 2026 at the Faculty of Law, West University of Timișoara, Romania. The European Society of International Law (ESIL) is supporting the event as an ESIL-supported conference.

The conference will explore the contribution of Central and Eastern Europe to the development of international law. It brings together judges, scholars and practitioners, including members of international courts, members of the Institut de Droit International and senior academics.

RYIEL is a new yearbook of the Faculty of Law, West University of Timișoara. According to the Yearbook's management page, it was founded by Judge Iulia Motoc of the International Criminal Court, who is also a professor of international and European law at the Faculty, and she edits it with Judge Sebastian Rădulețu (European Court of Human Rights) and Prof. Raluca Bercea (West University of Timișoara). The inaugural volume is published by Brill | Nijhoff.

The yearbook aims to give an annual account of Romania's engagement with international and EU law and, more broadly, of the wider Eastern European region. It will be published mainly in English, run double-blind peer review for its scholarly articles, and operate primarily as a digital, open-access publication.

• 09:00 Registration and check-in
• 09:30 Introductory speech: Iulia Motoc, Why a Romanian Yearbook of International and European Law?
• 10:00 Panel: Thomas Skouteris (national traditions in international legal scholarship), Chin Leng Lim (identities in international law), Gocha Lordkipanidze (time and international law), Ineta Ziemele (centre versus periphery dynamics)
• 11:15 Panel: Veronika Bílková (Central and Eastern Europe as a laboratory of international law), Patryk Labuda (Second World Approaches), Marek Wasiński (SWAIL as decoding), Mārtiņš Paparinskis (the International Law Commission and the Eastern European Group)
• 12:30 Panel: Malgosia Fitzmaurice and Olufemi Elias on the ICJ Advisory Opinion on climate change, Georg Nolte (online) on the Statute of the ICJ, Lorand Bartels on international economic law, Patrycja Grzebyk on advisory proceedings at the ICJ
• 14:00 Panel: Sergey Sayapin (a Silk Road perspective on Central and Eastern Europe), Peter Paczolay (the ECHR in the Hungarian legal system), Lauri Mälksoo (Russia and international law), Ganna Yudkivska (online) (Ukraine and international law)
• 15:15 Roundtable: Hilary Charlesworth (online), Iulia Motoc, Roxana Dumitrache, Raluca Bercea
• 16:00 Closing remarks

The programme is provisional. Some moderators are marked as provisional in the official programme.

The conference is hybrid: it runs on-site in Timișoara and is also livestreamed. ESIL lists attendance as open to all, so law students, researchers and practitioners from India can follow it. It is an attend-only event. There is no call for papers attached to it.

The official announcements do not mention a registration or attendance fee.

Neither the ESIL announcement nor the Faculty's RYIEL pages publish a registration form or the livestream link. Keep an eye on the ESIL event page linked below for updates. For livestream access or on-site attendance, write to the Yearbook's official address, ryiel@e-uvt.ro, well before 14 October 2026.