European Judicial Training Network Réseau Européen de de Formation Judiciaire Seminar EUROPEAN ASYLUM LAW 12-13 December, Vienna, Austria SPEAKERS & MODERATORS Peter NEDWED (Austria) Peter.Nedwed@vwgh.gv.at Seminar Moderator Mr Nedwed has served as a Judge for over twenty years and was appointed to the Supreme Administrative Court of Austria in 2004, where he deals mainly with Refugee Law matters. Until 2010, Judge Nedwed was also the co- Chair, together with Mr Boštjan Zalar, of the Asylum and Migration Law Working Group of the Association of European Administrative Judges (AEAJ). He is currently a board member of the Fundamental Rights Section of the Austrian Association of Judges. Seminar Moderator Welcoming words Sofia PINTO DE OLIVEIRA (Portugal) aspo@direito.uminho.pt Professor Pinto Oliveira is a lecturer and Director of the LL.M. in Human Rights of the University of Minho School of Law. She holds a doctorate in law with honours from the New University of Lisbon School of Law (2006), with a
thesis entitled The Right of Asylum under the Portuguese Constitution Scope of Protection of a Fundamental Right. Whilst researching for her thesis, Professor Pinto Oliveira spent one year in Germany at the University of Konstanz and at the Max-Planck Institute in Heidelberg. From 2010 to 2011, Professor Pinto Oliveira was the UNHCR National Consultant in Portugal for the Further Developing Asylum Quality Project, co-financed by the European Refugee Fund of the European Commission, and until 2010 she was an active member of the Board of Coordination of the Bachelor in Law in East-Timor, in the framework of the Portuguese Universities Foundation. The Common European Asylum System : Overview of EU s legal framework in Asylum and Migration matters (Thursday, 12 December, 09:30-11:00) Cathryn COSTELLO (United Kingdom) cathryn.costello@worc.ox.ac.uk Dr Costello is Andrew W. Mellon University Lectureship in International Human Rights and Refugee Law, at the Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford, with a fellowship at St Antony's College. From 2003-2013, she was Francis Reynolds Fellow & Tutor in EU & Public law at Worcester College, Oxford, during which time she also completed her DPhil studies on EU asylum and immigration law. She has taught a range of public and EU law courses on the Oxford undergraduate and postgraduate curriculum. She began her academic career in 1998 as Lecturer in European Law at the Law School, Trinity College Dublin, and from 2000-2003, she also held the position of Director of the Irish Centre for European Law. She has been a Visiting Professor at the University of San Francisco and a visiting research fellow at NYU School of Law. Dr Costello has published widely on many aspects of EU and human rights law, including asylum and refugee law, immigration, EU Citizenship and third country national family members, family reunification and immigration detention. Her current research includes a monograph on EU immigration and asylum law due to be published in OUP s Studies in European Law series, and an edited collection (with Professor Mark Freedland, St John's College) from the Migrants at Work Project, exploring intersections between immigration law and labour law. She is also an Associate Director of the Oxford Human Rights Hub, which aims to bring together academics, practitioners, and policy-makers from across the globe to advance the understanding and protection of human rights and equality. The ECtHR and CJEU on Dublin transfers (Thursday, 12 December, 11:30-13:00)
Holger BÖHMANN (Germany) hboehmann@hotmail.com Judge Böhmann currently serves at the High Administrative Court of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and has extensive training and professional experience in the field of Administrative Law; namely, in Migration and Asylum Law and Fundamental Rights, through his positions as Vice-President of the Association of European Administrative Judges (AEAJ), Co-chair of the AEAJ Working Group on Asylum and Migration, former President of the Board of the Association of Administrative Judges of the Federal State of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (VEV M-V), and Delegate for Europe of the German Federal Association of Administrative Judges (BDVR). Judge Böhmann holds a lifetime appointment as a Judge at the High Administrative Court of Greifswald, and has served as UN Legal Officer and Judicial Inspector to the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), as well as carried out several missions as Election Observer with the OSCE and the Council of Europe in, inter alia, Kosovo, Serbia, Macedonia and Kazakhstan. He is a certified judicial mediator and has extensive experience as a trainer and expert in administrative law with the German Foundation for International Legal Cooperation - having attended activities in Turkey, Vietnam and Azerbaijan -, as well as a lecturer to seminars developed by the AEAJ, namely in the field of Migration and Asylum Law, Fundamental Rights and cooperation with the EU Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) and the European Asylum Support Office (EASO). Country of Origin Information (COI) - Legal Framework, Accessibility and Assessment: A Practical Approach (Thursday, 12 December, 14:00-15:30) Gábor GYULAI (Hungary) gabor.gyulai@helsinki.hu Mr Gyulai has been working in the field of asylum since 2000. After working for two years at the UNHCR Representation in Hungary, he joined the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, where he currently works as the coordinator of the refugee programme and as a trainer. His main fields of research and professional interest are statelessness; evidence assessment, country information (COI) and medico-legal evidence in asylum procedures; intercultural sensitisation; gender and asylum; legislative advocacy and human rights/refugee law education. In recent years, he has trained lawyers, judges, asylum officers, police staff and social workers on these issues in several European and Latin-American countries. He is member of the Asylum Systems policy core group of the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) and provides expertise in the on-going global expert consultation process on statelessness under the auspices of the UNHCR. He also collaborates with the Open Society Justice Initiative as consultant on statelessness-related issues and is the Chair of the European Network on Statelessness (ENS) Steering Committee. Credibility Assessments (Thursday, 12 December, 16:00-17:30)
Marta BALLESTERO BELTRÁN (Malta/EASO) Marta.Ballestero@easo.europa.eu Ms Ballestero works as a senior training officer at the European Asylum Support Office (EASO). A member of the Centre for Training Quality and Expertise, she is responsible for the development of EASO s cooperation with courts and tribunals and EASO s training on inclusion, evidence assessment and interviewing techniques. She holds a law degree from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and a European Masters Degree from the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation (EIUC). Ms Ballestero has worked in the field of international protection since 2001. Before joining EASO, she worked as a UNHCR protection officer and as a senior RSD consultant deployed by the UNHCR Department of International Protection to support its operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Libya, Malaysia, Israel and Sudan. She has also worked as a programme manager with the Spanish Agency for Development Cooperation (AECID) in Bosnia and Herzegovina and as a legal advisor with the Spanish Commission for Refugees (CEAR). Presentation of the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) (Thursday, 12 December, 17:00-18:30) Boštjan ZALAR (Slovenia) bostjan.zalar@sodisce.si Prof. Dr. Zalar currently serves as a High Court judge of the Administrative Court of the Republic of Slovenia and an ad hoc judge of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg. He is a researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences and a lecturer at the Legal Clinics, Faculty of Law of the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), as well as a deputy rapporteur of the Working Group on Country of Origin Information (COI) and Country Guidance of the International Association of Refugee Law Judges. Until 2010, Mr Zalar was a co-chair of the Asylum and Migration Law Working Group of the Association of European Administrative Judges (AEAJ). As a member of the European Law Institute Project Committee, Mr Zalar was part of the Advisory Committee of the ELI project Statement on Case-Overload at the European Court of Human Rights. Fundamental Rights Protection in Asylum Cases (Friday, 13 December, 09:00-10:30) Nikolaos SITAROPOULOS (Greece) Nikolaos.SITAROPOULOS@coe.int Dr. Sitaropoulos currently serves as Head of Division I and Deputy to the Director of the Office of the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights dealing, inter alia, with the portfolios of Immigration, Asylum and Transitional Justice.
From 2007 to 2009, he served as Adviser to the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, and from April 2006 to October 2007, as Head of Unit of the Department for the Execution of Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg. Between 2000 and 2004, Dr Sitaropoulos held the positions of Legal Officer at the Greek National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR), Attorney at Law and European Commission Expert before the Directorate-General of Justice and Home Affairs regarding the implementation of the European Refugee Fund 2000-2004. Dr Sitaropoulos also has extensive experience in the delivery of international training at both conferences and University program, and is widely published in the field of Human Rights, Migration and Asylum Law. Major issues of protection of asylum seekers rights under Council of Europe standards (Friday, 13 December, 11:00-12:30)