Announcement of the event on the Facebook page of ELSA Regensburg. Serbia
The virtual talk on “International legal advice from Germany for transition states” for students at the Heidelberg and Regensburg faculty groups of the European Law Students’ Association (ELSA) was held on 25 June 2022.
Numbering 50,000 members in total, ELSA is the world’s largest association of law students. It aims to promote and encourage mutual understanding and collaboration and organises gatherings of future and early career lawyers from different countries and legal systems.
With this in mind, the participants were keen to hear more about the structure and methodologies of IRZ and about technical questions such as competing legal systems in transition states. There was a particular interest in the opportunity of completing internships with IRZ and of pursuing a career in the area of legal transformation.
The talk was held by the lawyer Dr Stefan Pürner, Head of Section at IRZ for project area 7 (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia), who was among the co-initiators of the Regensburg faculty group of ELSA in 1989.
A new translation of the German Criminal Code into Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian has been published by the IRZ, with an introduction written by the Research Director at the Institute for Eastern Law in Regensburg, Prof. Dr Dres. h.c. Friedrich-Christian Schroeder.
The book is part of a series of publications with translations of German laws into the languages of the partner states in South Eastern Europe, which are intended to strengthen the role of German law as an orientation law in legal transformation. The Minister of Justice of Northern Macedonia, Prof. Dr. Nikola Tupancheski, himself a professor of criminal law and a member of the local expert commission for the reform of the criminal code until he took office, recently confirmed the important role of the publication.
The translations are not only used to inform groups of experts working on draft reform laws, but are also used by scholars researching on comparative law, practitioners working across borders and students. They are also a popular tool for learning German legal terminology.
On 24 February 2022, the introductory meeting took place as part of the new format "supported language tandem", through which the IRZ would like to support law students from Germany and the Western Balkans to learn the legal vocabulary in the language of the respective tandem partner. This measure complements events such as the course in German legal terminology for German-speaking Serbian lawyers in Belgrade, which the IRZ has provided for the last 15 years.
The participants of the introductory meeting consisted of German-speaking prospective lawyers from the faculty of law in Novi Sad and law students from Germany, the latter having knowledge of Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian due to their family background.
What all the participants have in common is that they want to improve their verbal interactions and their knowledge of legal vocabulary in the other language. The language tandems are intended to support both sets of attendees. They take place in cross-border groups of two, in which the languages are spoken separately and in equal proportions. In addition to the bilateral meetings, the IRZ will offer participants further joint workshops at irregular intervals to exchange experiences.
The welcome address was given by Sloboda Midorović, Assistant Professor at the faculty of law in Novi Sad, and Dr. Stefan Pürner, Head of Division "South Eastern Europe I" at the IRZ. Finally, Nina Radojičić and Till Voges, both currently employed in the "South Eastern Europe I" department at the IRZ, presented the notes of the content regarding the language tandems. The participants got to know each other through an online introduction group and were organised in language tandems based on their areas of legal expertise.
Participants will learn more about foreign-language legal terminology in the future, and thus acquire a key qualification for bilateral legal transactions, which will also assist European integration.
