IACL Roundtable in Athens, November 2015: “The sovereign debt revisited by Constitutional and International Law”
The next IACL Roundtable will be in Athens on 13-14 November 2015, under the auspices of the Speaker of the Greek Parliament, Ms Zoe Konstantopoulou.
Update 8.7.2015: The organisers intend to “live stream” this event — details will be announced closer to the time of the roundtable. For further information or to register to participate in the roundtable, please contact Miss Alessia Fiumi
e-mail address: afiumi@eplo.eu Phone number: +30 210 72 58 801 ext. 104
Institutional Affiliation: The host will be the Greek Parliament, whereas the scientific coordination will be ensured by the Greek Association of Constitutionalists and the European Public Law Organization.
Conveners: The Conveners of the Roundtable will be Professor George Katrougalos, Democritus University, with Professor Kostas Mavrias, University of Athens and President of the Scientific Council of the Parliament and Spyros Flogaitis, University of Athens and President of the European Public Law Organization.
Venue: The historical Senate Hall of the Parliament for the Roundtable (the IACL Executive Committee meeting will be in one of the smaller rooms of the Parliament).
Theme: “The sovereign debt revisited by the Constitutional and International Law”. The focus will be on the interplay between Constitutional and International Law, focusing on issues involving Human Rights protection and threats to democratic sovereignty. Issues to be addressed, are, indicatively:
- the challenges, in several countries, of meeting commitments to social and other rights while responding to their obligations toward creditors;
- the challenges of sustaining economic growth while securing minimally adequate social support;
- new, still contested concepts, such as the “odious debt”.
These analyses should focus on approaches to responding to economic crisis and duress, involving action at both national and transnational levels.
The Roundtable will have the following sessions:
- State sovereignty and conditionality of international economic transactions: Loans, Human Aid, Foreign Investments.
- International loan treaties and human rights protection.
- The doctrine of “odious debt” under the Constitutional and International Law.
- A round table recapitulating and discussing the findings of the previous sessions.
Developing countries should face and overcome their negative experiences regarding negotiations with IMF and the like such as multilateral banks. Factually, those countries signed up agreements which may be considered unconstitutional due to the content of clauses which affected the essential grounds of constitutional principles and social rights recognized by their Constitutions. A possible solution to combat the drawbacks of those contracts is to interpret their clauses taking into account the content of economic and social rights treaties, in order to protect the core content of those rights.
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Dear Cesar Landa, I totally agree. In case of international obligations, the States cannot invoke their constitutions (Vienna Convention). The States should argue that the human rights treaties must prevail. This is debate of the relationship between financial law and human rights, or private and public international law and human rights and how IMF can be accountable for human rights (social rights) violations. The UE took into account the most vulnerable (minorities) when decided to implement austerity measures. Some consequentialism and proportionality reasonings may be useful.
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how I can participate in this round table ,am a member of Iacl
Please if it is possible can the organizer right to the Greece embassy at Amman Jordan for visa
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For further information or to register to participate in the roundtable, please contact Miss Alessia Fiumi e-mail address: afiumi@eplo.eu Phone number: +30 210 72 58 801 ext. 104
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