Month: March 2019

This week we were privileged to host Dr Bogdan Chirițoiu, Chairman of Competition Council of Romania. Dr Chirițoiu delivered a guest lecture about challenges of competition law enforcement and cooperation within the European Competition Network. Some of the highlight included discussion of the evolution of Romanian enforcement and some insights into practical aspects of dealing with transnational violations (inclusive of having dawn raids executed by competition agencies in other EU member states).

The lecture met with considerable interests. Apart from our LLM students, doctoral candidates, faculty members as well as some civil servants were in attendance.

We are very grateful for Dr Chirițoiu’s visit. Mulțumesc!

Romania is currently holding the Presidency of Council of the European Union. To learn more about the Romanian Presidency see here.

I am delighted to share that, based on feedback collected anonymously via an online form, decisive majority of students find this module intellectually stimulating and challenging, with ALL considering that the class is interactive and encourages participation.

What do students enjoy most? Here are some unredacted comments:

‘Interactive Sessions and I feel really motivated and involved in class. Also, some intellectual humour to the module works absolutely perfect. I think I have made the best decision to be a part of this class and may even consider taking it up for my dissertation.’

‘Interactivity and diversity of materials used (videos, graphs, stats, articles)’

‘Class very well-prepared, amazing motivation of the Professor, pleasant atmosphere where everyone can participate’

‘The activities where you have to research subjects in the class and answer them on OneNote to share them with everyone’

‘Group interaction and challenging discussions’

What are some of the basic take home lessons from this for staff? Students appreciate opportunities to engage. They seek to and benefit from contributing and interacting, both in class and outside the classroom. Diverse teaching methods and aids, as well as technology can facilitate it. Althought all this requires considerable upfront planning and preparing for diverse outcomes, it can positively impact on students engagement with the module content, develop their interest and curiosity—leading, hopefully, to better educational outcomes.

PS: I enocurage all colleagues to run in-semester anonymous evaluations to seek students’ feedback.

We are delighted to share that our School received a Jean Monnet Module plaque- ‘a label signifying quality in European integration studies’. It follows a last year Jean Monnet Erasmus+ award enabling development of this new module in Comparative Competition Law.

Our School has been considerably successful when it comes to Jean Monnet actions. In past, my colleague Professor Dagmar Schiek has been awarded a Jean Monnet Ad Personam Chair in European Law. Moreover, our School hosted a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence, led by Dagmar, which now continues as a Centre of European and Transnational Studies.

This week we were honoured to host a guest speaker—Professor Tadashi Shiraishi from the University of Tokyo. Professor Shiraishi delivered a guest lecture outlining and analysing exploitative abuses in competition law from the EU, US and Japanese perspectives. The presentation holistically built on our in class work so far with a variety of interlinkages to past discussions in class. It also nicely laid groundwork for a subsequent group exercise concerning claims raises in relation to conduct of high-tech firms.

ありがとうございました!