Konferences sekcijas

This section explores how digitalization and AI are reshaping law across the EU, focusing on governance, accountability, and ethics in legal policy decisions of the AI era. Core themes include public-sector digital transformation, the challenges of implementing the EU AI Act, and the impact of AI on labour law, civil liability, and criminal justice. The section also examines ethical AI policy frameworks in education and the regulation of esports, highlighting the need to balance innovation with public interests.

This section examines energy production, environmental protection, and sustainability from a comparative law perspective, covering climate change mitigation and renewable energy acceleration, new technologies (e.g., small modular reactors), as well as carbon footprint management (including Scope 3 and black carbon reduction). Convergence in EU and national policies will be analyzed, as well as divergence in resource management, regulatory enforcement, and environmental responsibility (including approaches to fairness). Special attention will be paid to the marine and coastal dimension: the preservation of underwater cultural heritage and the contribution of environmental archaeology, the protection of critical national maritime infrastructure against hybrid threats, and a life-cycle view of the regulation of offshore wind and other maritime projects in the Baltic Sea region. The section also looks at public-private partnership instruments (e.g., energy performance contracts) in search of solutions that balance national interests with global sustainability goals and promote international legal cooperation.

The presentation is a follow-up of the previous presentation (later published as an article) 'The Principle of Appropriate and Proportionate Remuneration in Copyright Contracts and its Implementation in the Baltic States', by the same authors, conducted in 2021, which addressed the issue of the implementation in the Baltic States of the legal provisions of the Digital Single Market Directive 2019/790 (the DSM Directive) on the appropriate and proportionate remuneration for authors when they license or transfer their rights. 

Whereas the previous research was devoted to the more formal legal analysis of the implementation of the provisions of the DSM Directive into national legislation, in this contribution a more empirical approach is taken, relying on the findings of the previous research, but also including the experience gathered by the practical application of the newly implemented norms for the more than three-year period. In particular, the presentation addresses the question of how the regulation on remuneration works in real contractual practices (and whether it works at all) between authors, publishers, and other users, as well as the main problems and obstacles that have emerged. Studies, already conducted in other European countries, show that despite the DSM Directive regulation, tendencies are not favourable to authors. For example, the buyout practice is ever-increasing, and the lump sum remains the most common form of remuneration, opposite to the expectations of the DSM Directive. 

To achieve the goals of the proposed research, the questionnaires will be prepared for the authors and producers, and individual interviews will be conducted, thus gathering the empirical information. Existing scholarship and studies from other European countries will also be considered, such as the European Commission's Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology Study on contractual practices affecting the transfer of copyright and related rights and the creators and producers’ ability to exploit their rights (2023). This will enable a comparison with the findings from the research conducted in the Baltic States. 

Certain common patterns of circumvention or dilution of the appropriate and proportionate remuneration principle, such as through contractual waivers, choice of applicable law or lack of enforcement infrastructure, can be presupposed. Particular attention is paid to the imbalance of bargaining power in creative sectors and how it continues to undermine the DSM Directive's goals.  

There is one more factor in the field that, on its part, may complicate the already difficult remuneration situation for authors, that is, a rapid proliferation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems in the creative sectors. One of the direct consequences is that authors should compete not only with their peers, but with increasingly cheaper AI systems' output. The opportunity for producers to turn to the AI systems may weaken the already weak position of authors even further. 

The research is not restricted to the online copyright uses, but includes the traditional, offline uses as well.  

The conference section would consist of national reports presenting the findings for each particular country. 

In the context of the overall conference theme “National Legal Systems and the EU Law: Reality and Future Challenges in a Comparative Perspective,” this section explores how European Union law interacts with national legal systems amid rapid political and legal transformation. The discussions aim to highlight the dynamics of legal convergence, divergence, and adaptation within Member States and candidate countries alike.

This section focuses on current developments and challenges in the application and evolution of European Union law, with particular attention to experiences in EU enlargement, pre- and post-accession judicial practice, and cross-border civil justice cooperation.

The presentations will address both Latvia’s and Estonia’s experiences in applying EU law and the Brussels I bis Regulation, as well as Ukraine’s and other candidate countries’ perspectives. Special attention will also be given to the impact of the EU Anti-SLAPP Directive on freedom of expression and the right to a fair trial, and to questions concerning the free movement of workers and the harmonisation of financial-sector taxation in an evolving economic landscape.

The section will cover procedural aspects and court practice of the national constitutional review institutions (Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court) in climate and environmental protection. Locus standi issues, namely, the cycle of persons and procedural requirements of those who may turn to the constitutional review institution to raise the appropriate issue, namely, the role of the NGO sector, will be pointed out.  National reports shall analyse appropriate court practices where climate change issues and environmental protection are explored. Presentations will focus on the central question: can or cannot; if can, how constitutional review institutions may influence environmental protection and the achievement of climate targets. 

This section will include speakers from Italy, Poland, Slovenia, Cyprus, Estonia, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia and will cover wide variety of topics, starting with the corporate and company law and its interaction with sustainability requirements until the matters of consumers protection law and prohibition of unfair commercial practices. Thus the presentations, included in this section, could be of interest not only for legal scholars, judges, attorneys, in-house lawyers, but also for the officials of the business registers and consumer protection institutions, as well as sustainability officers of the company. 

This special session focuses on the legal and practical problems that EU Member States face regarding the adaptation and implementation of the Representative Actions Directive (RAD) in their national legal systems. The session includes presentations from participants across various EU countries, focusing on their national experiences with collective redress and the RAD. The first part of the session will be dedicated to discussions on collective redress in Hungary and Belgium, as well as examining the Estonian experiences on the implementation of the RAD. The second part will focus on the RAD in Portugal, collective redress in Lithuania, and representative actions in Greek law, covering the transposition and initial experiences in these countries. The concluding segment will feature discussions on rethinking representative actions in Finland and a detailed two-part presentation on collective redress in Latvia. The aim of the section is to contribute to creating a common EU law understanding in conjunction of national experiences. Practitioners and policymakers are invited to join the section and contribute actively to the discussions between the presentations. We look forward to their professional input.