Olga Ceran speaks at the ICON-S BENELUX Chapter Conference in Brussels
On 23 May 2025, Olga Ceran spoke at the ICON-S Benelux Chapter conference dedicated to ‘Public Law in an Age of Contestation and Systemic Change’. This conference was organised by the Université libre de Bruxelles, in collaboration with the Centre de droit européen and the Centre de droit public et social.
Olga was part of the panel on Conditionality and EU Values: Actors, Procedures and Effectiveness, together with Ilaria Gambardella (KU Leuven), Jaime Luque Lora (Maastricht University), and Pauline Thinus (ULB). The panel was chaired by Matteo Bonelli (Maastricht University) and Paul Dermine (ULB) served as a discussant.
Olga’s presentation focused on ‘Safeguarding academic freedom in the EU: the past, present, and future of funding conditionality’. It explored the current legal framework of conditionality that can be used for the protection of academic freedom, its uses up to date, as well as new proposals raised in this context. Ilaria Gambardella shared preliminary findings of her research regarding the implementation of the Common Provisions Regulation's horizontal enabling condition related to the Charter, in particular the way it is being used by national administrations involved in the management of EU funds. Jaime Luque Lora discussed the (lack of) parliamentary oversight in the enforcement of conditionality in the EU. Pauline Thinus closed the panel with a presentation on the implementation of funding conditionality in the case of Hungary specifically, scrutinizing both the EU-level and domestic constraints of this type of action.
Olga’s talk at ICON-S Benelux Chapter conference was based on her recent article The democratic justification of academic freedom in EU law: Article 13 of the EU Charter, the Rule of Law Toolbox, and the scope for EU action (forthcoming in the European Constitutional Law Review). The post-print (accepted version) of the paper is available in here.
The full programme of the conference can be found here.