History
The EU Legal Studies is an interdisciplinary research centre studying European law at Liege University since 1963.
Located in Belgium, Liege was in the running to host the Court of Justice of the now European Union before it was decided the institution would be based in Luxembourg. Notwithstanding that choice, the study of European law has always had a long history at the University of Liège. Over the years, no less than five professors of the Faculty of Law have been appointed as Judges to the European Court of Justice: Pierre Pescatore, René Joliet, Melchior Wathelet, Franklin Dehousse and Sean Van Raepenbusch. It is precisely to one of them that we owe the birth of an Institute of European Law in Liege. In 1963, Pierre Pescatore created the Institute of European Legal Studies under the impulse of Fernand Dehousse. That is the beginning of a story that continues today.
In 2004, the University of Liege created an Advanced Master programme (LL.M.) in EU law to respond to the ever-increasing demand for specialist legal professionals.
The Institute particularly has a long tradition of excellence in the field of EU competition law. Numerous seminal studies on this discipline have been published by Professors of the University of Liege who are still authoritative today, namely Leon Dabin, Charles “Charley” del Marmol, Aurelio Pappalardo, Paul Demaret, Jean-François Bellis and Damien Geradin. In retrospect, those names constitute a true Liege School of competition law. Based on that legacy, Nicolas Petit, Axel Gautier and Lionel Artige founded in 2013 the Liege Competition and Innovation Institute (LCII).
Over the last decade, EU research at Liege University aimed at exploring the complex relationship between competition and innovation in society, from both an economic and legal standpoint. That ambition was epitomized by our LL.M in EU law whose lion’s share is and remains competition law and intellectual property. Our LL.M. has been a success for a long time, gathering excellent promotions of students from all over the world. Many of our LL.M. courses are taught by top practitioners and scholars specialised in competition, intellectual property and data protection law.
At the same time, however, our research activities have expanded significantly beyond only competition and intellectual property law. Our research covers nowadays a much wider area of EU substantive law, EU institutional Law, EU litigation, EU constitutional law, EU citizenship, the EU Charter of Fundamental rights, State Aid, Member States’ autonomy and the regulation of data and artificial intelligence.
As a result, only keeping the name LCII alone would not do justice to the vastness and cutting-edge nature of research and teaching taking place within our research group. For that reason and to pay tribute to this rich history of EU law at Liege, Pieter Van Cleynenbreugel and Bernard Vanbrabant thought it was time to reflect this change in our name as well. They decided to rebrand the whole institute under the now known name of EU Legal Studies.
