The newly formed Maynooth Centre for European Law at the School of Law and Criminology held a workshop on the Northern Ireland Protocol/Windsor Framework on 22 June featuring high-profile speakers. Participants in the workshop discussed presentations by Professors Chris McCrudden, Katy Hayward, Aoife O’Donoghue and Anurag Deb (all Queen’s University Belfast), Professor Colin Murray (Newcastle University), Dr Eleni Frantziou (Durham University), Professor Tamara Hervey (City, University of London), Professor Dagmar Schiek (UCC) as well as Centre members Dr Mary Dobbs, Dr Orla Kelleher, and Professor Tobias Lock. The Centre was delighted to have Rory Montgomery, MRIA (former Second Secretary General, Department of Foreign Affairs), Annmarie O’Kane (Centre for Cross-Border Studies) and our own Dr Hubert Smekal as discussants.
The broad themes were the protection of rights under the Protocol; cooperation North-South, East-West; and the future of the Protocol and the Windsor Framework.
Most of the workshop papers are due to appear in a special issue of the Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly in early 2024.
The Centre would like to thank MUSSI and the University’s Impact through Dissemination Fund for their generous support.
About the Centre for European Law: The Centre for European Law serves as the institutional hub for the School’s significant European Law expertise. The Centre creates an environment to facilitate formal and informal exchanges between researchers interested in European Law and aims to ensure greater internal and external visibility of this expertise by giving it an institutional home. The Centre contributes to achieving the University’s strategic goals, notably concerning engaged and impactful research (which members of the Centre produce); postgraduate education (by including research students as members); and equality, diversity, inclusion (notably inclusive digitalisation) and interculturalism as well as sustainability, biodiversity and care of the environment (as research themes pursued under the banner of European Law).
Thematically the Centre for European Law endorses a broad conception of European Law. This includes the Law of the European Union (public and private), the law originating in the Council of Europe, most notably the European Convention on Human Rights as well as their comparative law dimensions.