The students of the Faculty of Law excelled in a French Moot Court

2025.03.25.

This year, the French Moot Court in Human Rights, an international competition previously launched by the ELTE Faculty of Law in cooperation with the French Institute in Budapest, took place in Namur, Belgium. After the pandemic, the competition was renewed under the Erasmus+ BIP programme, with the participation of several renowned European partner universities (Poitiers, UCLY Lyon, Aristotle Thessaloniki, Groningen).

This year, the Université de Namur was the host, and the European Court of Human Rights' case law on non-discrimination was the basis of the competition, in connection with their theme of inclusion. Thursday's debate competition saw ten teams of two people each compete in front of a jury of prominent members. The jury was chaired by Françoise Tulkens, a judge at the ECHR from 1998 to 2012 and Vice President of the ECHR from 2011 to 2012, and comprised Pierre Nihoul, President of the Belgian Constitutional Court, and Alexis Deswaef, a human rights lawyer and Belgian President of FIDH.

The teams from Poitiers and Thessaloniki won the best team prizes. The students of ELTE ÁJK were also honoured:

The jury awarded the individual prize for the best non-Francophone performance to Luca Sulyok.

At the "concours off" held on Tuesday, the day before the competition, Zita Hadfi was awarded first place as a team member, and Alexandra Semerédy was praised for her excellent individual performance.

Other members of the ELTE teams were Laura Békefi, Sarolta Szombati, Liza Tombory and Bálint Bartos, and Nóra Egyed. The students were prepared during the sixteen weeks preceding the competition by our former student Dr. János Nagy, who is currently working at the Secretariat General of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Our heartfelt congratulations to the teams and especially to the prize-winners! Next year's competition is expected to take place in Poitiers next spring.

Jury President Francoişe Tulkens with ELTE Law students participating in the moot court: Laura Békefi, Zita Hadfi, Alexandra Semerédy, Luca Sulyok, Sarolta Szombati, Liza Tombory and Bálint Bartos (Nóra Egyed could not travel due to illness), as well as with Dr. János Nagy, the preparatory teacher and Krisztina Rozsnyai, Associate Dean of the Faculty of Law. In the background are the other two members of the jury.