At the Willem C. Vis Moot, “the” moot competition in international commercial arbitration, the Michael L. Sher Award for the Spirit of the Willem C. Vis Moot is “awarded to a team or an individual student for its dedication and commitment to the Spirit of the Vis Moot.” This year, the award went to the University Eduardo Mondlane’s team from Maputo, Mozambique. Read More
Month: May 2021
Post-Brexit UK Accession to Lugano Convention: The EU Commission’s Assessment
There has been a fair amount of speculation about the EU’s position regarding the application of the United Kingdom to accede to the 2007 Lugano, and we have tracked the topic fairly closely on the blog, including the latest press reports that the EU Commission might have changed its approach. Read More
The Month in Retrospect: What Else Happened in April 2021
Some Back and Forth on Brexit and Lugano
On 8 April 2021, I covered the first anniversay of the UK’s application to join the Lugano Convention, and took a fairly pessimistic view as to the prospects of the UK becoming a member state. So I was quite surprised to see a headline in the Financial Times on 12 April 2021 that claimed: “UK set to secure Brussels’ backing for joining legal pact“. The FT’s sources apparently got it wrong, however, and a couple of hours later the FT had to retract its report: “Brussels opposes UK bid to join legal pact, splitting EU states – European Commission says Britain should not be allowed to rejoin Lugano convention.” Other sources such as Sueddeutsche Zeitung confirm that there had been no change in the EU Commission’s policy – there is no prospect of the UK joining Lugano any time soon. Read More