The second meeting of the Editorial Board was held at the Faculty of Law in Belgrade on 28-30 of October. The editors had a chance to discuss the current issues of the publication of the journal, the editorial policy and to crate strategies for future development of the publication. Having analyzed the developments within the Strengthening of the EU Law Studies project which is in its last year of implementation and as a major component had  included publication of 4 issues of SEE LJ, the board reached a conclusion that three years of the implementation were extremely beneficial / significant for the further development of the journal. The project had strengthened the internal structures, capacities and dynamics within the process of the publication of the journal, helped improve its structure as well as its editorial policy, and provided so much sothafter continuity of publication. It helped further in the promotion of the publication, and made it a catalyst for wider public debate on relevant EU Law topics.

Having all this in mind, the Editorial Board have decided that the next logical step in the development of the journal would be registration at relevant data bases for which the first steps haven ben initiated. Secondly, the Editorial Board was of a strong conviction that the SEE LJ should continue with regular publication of content after the closure of this project too. And though the printed versions might not be available for a while, it was unanimous decision of the EB that the SEE LJ should continue with publication in e form as it was before. The new policy entails that the journal will be open to a wider audience including interested authors from the region, specifically PhD candidates and the legal practitioners who would be interested in contributing. Having all this in mind, the EB had agreed that the new Call for Papers should be published in January 2020, stating clearly that the new editions will be now published outside of the JM “Strengthening the EU Law Studies in SEE” project and under the auspices of SEELS. The new editions will be published in e format solely, and the Centre for SEELS will work on conducting all of the necessary activities to register the publication in at least one relevant data base. The possibility of retroactive registration of the numbers of the SEE LJ will be additionally explored.

Since the project was allowed the extension of 4 months in August 2019, the final activities of this 3 years project were organized and implemented with success. Thus in this four months period the Editorial Board of the journal had its second meeting at the end of October at the Faculty of Law in Belgrade, while the faculties had successfully completed the second round of EU Law Days and finally the seventh edition of the SEE Law Journal (which is 4 edition published within this project) was prepared and issued on 26 of December 2019. This wraps up successfully the project as all of the panned activities and outputs were completed in the set time frame while reaching wide academic audience. The SEE LJ will continue with publication in e-format after the closure of this project, which we see as a proof that the capacities of our network and the Editorial Board of the journal were significantly strengthened which will lead to further development of this significant publication. The latest Call for Papers will be published after the New Year’s festivities throughout our network, and will be active till 20^th of February 2020.

The last number of the SEE Law Journal to be published within this project was prepared in the autumn months of 2019 when the peer review and the proofreading activities were completed. This issue is fourth in the raw that is published within the Strengthening the EU Law Studies in SEE project, and this time features authors from the Faculties of Law in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Skopje and Tirana. As for the specific scientific focus of the papers, the publication is heterogeneous as it deals with such subjects that tackle different legal spheres. Thus some of the papers deal with the issues related to the Corporate Law thus reviewing the issue of the Europeans Commission’s minority shareholders proposals giving a thorough overview on the matter, while other deal with an overview of the provisions of the EU Directive on Takeover Bids and the Law on Company Takeover relating to the squeeze-out right, and an analysis of the application of the institute in the legislation of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina based on practical case studies. The remaining papers deal with legislation and regulation assessment in the legislation of the Bosnia and Herzegovina and the last one deals with the topics related to the Human Rights – more specifically - the application of the European Convention on Human Rights in the Republic of North Macedonia in relation to the prohibition of discrimination.

Starting with this issue the SEE Law Journal will be open to wider scope of contributions in line with the amended editorial policy that aims to include valuable content for both legal practitioners and academics. Thus the journal will be open to the contribution consisted of non-scientific papers, but valuable analyses, reviews, practices and similar inputs related to the approximation of the EU Law in the region vis a vis regional legislations. We start this practice with a review of a book on a very current topic of liability for the artificial intelligence and internet.   

We are happy to announce that the EU law days which are a significant component of the project „Strengthening the EU Legal Studies in the South East Europe”, have been implemented by all faculties members of SEELS network in the past period, culminating with the two EU law days that are currently taking place at the Law Faculty in Belgrade.

They took various formats as lectures, presentations, debates, round tables etc.

The Law Faculty of Skopje has organized a lecture on 23.12.2019.

After a successful implementation of the summer school in Split, the Europa-Institut and the Centre for SEELS organised a workshop within the frames of the project #FreeMedia4WesternBalkans: Promoting Legal Education in the field of Media law, Democratization and the EU accession process, with participants coming from the SEELS Network and the Europa-Institut, that took place on the 8^th of November 2019, at the Legal Clinics of the Faculty of Law “Iustinianus Primus” in Skopje.

The participants were welcomed by the Dean of the Faculty of Law “Iustinianus Primus” – Prof. Dr. Goran Koevski and the Director of the Europa-Institut, Saarland University - Prof. Dr. Thomas Giegerich.

The workshop was focused on how to include media law and the freedom of expression in the daily curricula of law schools as well as the outputs of the implementation of the project and a potential follow up.

In addition, a presentation was delivered by Velimir Delovski as a HELP Programme Focal Point for North Macedonia on how the courses work in general, but also about the courses related to the topic, and Ms. Ana Petrushevska from the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network(BIRN).