ANNOUNCEMENTS

Another important award for the NKUA Law School, which participated in the International Moot Court Competition European Law Moot Court (ELMC) 2025-2026. The team of undergraduate students, after participating in the written phase of the procedure by submitting briefs, qualified for the Regional Final in Bratislava, which was held from 5 to 8 February 2026. The students achieved particularly high scores in the written procedure, and delivered excellent speeches, achieving high performance.

The Athens Law School team consisted of undergraduate students Anastasia-Ioanna Anastasaki, Despina Damigou-Zamanika, Ariadne Mathioudaki and Stavroula Bouterakou.

The international European Law Moot Court Competition (http://www.europeanlawmootcourt.eu/) has been held since 1989, under the auspices of the Court of Justice of the European Union, with the participation of undergraduate and postgraduate student teams from more than 80 European and American universities, including the College of Europe, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, University College London, KU Leuven University, Università di Bologna. It is based on a mock trial before the Court of Justice of the European Union, and includes written and oral proceedings. A particularity of the competition that differentiates it from others is its bilingualism, which is also scored, as the teams are asked to develop their arguments in English and French.

The case of this year's competition touched on difficult issues of European current affairs:

a) the horizontal direct effect that the provisions of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union have for an individual, not only in the application of EU law, but also in the context of private contractual relationships, so that the national court may not apply or interpret a private contractual term.

b) the legality of a flat-rate, gender- and age-differentiated compensation for moral damage arising from personal data breaches in the context of representative actions in light of Articles 82 of Regulation 2016/679 (General Data Protection Regulation) and 21 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

c) the compatibility of a national rule excluding private financing of litigation by third parties established or operating outside the European Union with Article 63 TFEU.

The preparation was undertaken by the students Alexandra Alexaki, Maria-Eleni Kotzia and Sofia Bandana, members of the team that participated in the competition last year. The contribution of Assistant Professor, Mr. I. Kourtis, was also significant.

The team was prepared under the academic supervision of Professor Ms. R. – E. Papadopoulou, and Associate Professor Mr.Manolis Perakis.

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the law firms Dryllerakis Law Firm and Kyriakides Georgopoulos Law Firm, whose kind sponsorship contributed to the team's participation in the competition.