From 2 to 4 September 2026, Paris hosted the Annual Conference of the European Law Institute (ELI), marking the Institute’s 15th anniversary.
For the Open Dialogue Platform, participation in the conference provided an opportunity to engage in a broad European professional and academic dialogue on the transformation of law in response to profound changes in society, technology, and institutions.
The conference brought together scholars, practising lawyers, and representatives of European legal institutions to address questions that increasingly transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries. Among the central themes were the relationship between law and technology, the protection of fundamental rights, institutional responsibility, and the further development of the European legal space.
Particularly valuable were the interdisciplinary and comparative-law perspectives that allow law to be understood not merely as a system of rules and procedures, but as a complex institutional framework interacting with society, technology, culture, and the mechanisms through which trust is built and sustained.
A particularly thought-provoking dimension of the conference was the engagement between law and artistic practices.
One of the most striking examples was a theatrical performance devoted to the Dreyfus Affair. The roles were performed by practising lawyers, creating a distinctive form of professional reflection on one of the defining episodes in the history of French legal and political culture.
Bringing legal analysis into dialogue with theatrical practice made it possible to approach this historical case not simply as a collection of judicial documents and legal arguments, but as a complex human and institutional story involving evidence, procedure, prejudice, responsibility, and the limits of justice.
This format is particularly relevant to contemporary approaches to legal education and the legal profession. Art, in this context, does not merely illustrate law; it creates an additional space in which law can be experienced and reflected upon through memory, human experience, emotion, and narrative.
For the Open Dialogue Platform, this resonates strongly with the concept of “Law Beyond the Text” an approach in which law is considered not in isolation, but in relation to practices, institutions, culture, and human experience.
Another important feature of the conference was the strong presence of Ukrainian lawyers and scholars.
For us, this goes far beyond symbolic representation. The presence of the Ukrainian legal and academic community within European professional networks creates an opportunity to bring Ukrainian experience directly into the European legal dialogue not merely as an object of study, but as a source of professional and institutional knowledge.
The participation of Ukrainian researchers and practitioners also opens valuable space for comparative reflection on how legal systems respond to exceptional circumstances, technological transformation, challenges to fundamental rights, and changing institutional environments.
The 15th anniversary of the European Law Institute provided an opportunity not only to reflect on the Institute’s development, but also to consider the future of European law.
Law today operates in an environment in which the boundaries between legal, technological, social, and cultural processes are becoming increasingly fluid. Artificial intelligence, digitalisation, new forms of social interaction, and institutional transformation raise questions that cannot be addressed through traditional legal approaches alone.
The European legal space therefore requires sustained dialogue between scholarship and practice, law and technology, institutions and society, and legal knowledge and culture.
For the Open Dialogue Platform, participation in the ELI Annual Conference represents a continuation of this work: creating spaces in which Ukrainian and European professional experiences can meet, interact, and contribute to new directions of joint academic and research activity.
We are grateful to our colleagues for the substantive discussions, intellectual exchange, new professional connections, and the opportunity to continue this dialogue through future academic and research initiatives.
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