ESIL Newsletter – Autumn 2025

Editor: Ana Salinas (Universidad de Málaga)

1. Message of the President – Christian J. Tams – 

Dear ESIL Members,

It’s two months since our Berlin conference on ‘Reconstructing International Law’, held from 10-13 September 2025. Even by the standards of ESIL’s Annual Conferences, this was a huge gathering. Three numbers make me realise just what a big movement our Society has become:

• 651 – the number of registered participants coming together in Berlin;
• 296 – the number of speakers giving papers during IG workshops or the main conference; and
• 26 – the number of the local organising team who went out of their way to make us feel at home.

It’s all been quite a feast!

But of course, annual conferences are not just about numbers and about coming together; they are meant to challenge us and to broaden our horizons. I think that Berlin succeeded in this respect as well. In the farewell questionnaire, 3/4 of participants rated agorae and forum panels as either ‘excellent’ or ‘good’. I certainly learned a lot and felt challenged in a positive sense. To highlight three of my takeaways:

• ESIL should be more vocal in the debate about academic freedom and its limits (a challenge highlighted in debates about an IG event with Francesca Albanese and the dedicated panel on ‘Academic Freedom and the Discourse on International Law’ held on the Conference’s final day).
• There is significant interest, outside specialist circles, in writings that ‘make international law public’ (a point emphasised in a panel co-hosted with the ECR network).
• While the Conference’s avowed focus was on international law’s reconstruction, not all of us may be ready yet to ‘move beyond crisis narratives’, as the conference theme encouraged us to do: many debates focused on preserving an existing acquis against de(con)struction – a defensive task that (as Christian Walter highlighted during the concluding panel) international lawyers face alongside constitutional and public lawyers.

So what remains? Gratitude, certainly – to all participants and presenters, but above all to the local organising team chaired by Helmut Aust and Heike Krieger, who put in an enormous amount of work to curate a wonderful conference, and to whom, on behalf of the entire Society, I say a huge ‘thank you’! And curiosity at what our next events will bring, the Research Forum in Kraków on ‘Sustainable International Law’ (9-10 April 2026) and our 21st ESIL Annual Conference, on the theme of ‘International Law and Conflicts’, to be held in Málaga from 3-5 September 2026. Let’s keep up momentum!

A renewed Board

At the end of the Berlin conference, the Society’s Board was partially renewed. Helmut Aust and Sarah Nouwen completed their terms as Board members. Both have left a mark on our work.

Sarah helped us keep close ties with our Florence base at the EUI and was instrumental in getting us to agree on the Guidelines for the Diversity of Conference and Panel Speakers, while Helmut made time, beyond the massive job of organising the Berlin conference, to prepare a series of ESIL newsletters. We’ll miss their collegiality and their focused contributions! At the same time, we welcome two new Board members: Armando Rocha, who joins the Board in the run-up to our 2027 Annual Conference in Lisbon (which he will host with his colleagues) and Arnulf Becker Lorca, who will act as our liaison at the EUI.

Thank you, Sarah and Helmut – and welcome, Armando and Arnulf!

Gleider Hernandez will remain a Board member for one more year, but has decided to step down from his role as ESIL President, a role he has held since 2023. The two years of Gleider’s presidency were exciting and challenging at the same time. We celebrated ESIL’s 20th anniversary, but have entered a third decade in which international law is facing more sustained and more diverse threats and in which we need a fuller debate on how, as a Society, we can live up to our goal of ‘contribut[ing] to the rule of law in international relations’ (as our Articles of Association require us).

Gleider, you have been a President who cares about ESIL, and you have opened spaces for discussion and debate. My heartfelt thanks for your commitment and dedication!

Following Gleider’s decision to step down, the Board selected me to serve as the Society’s new, tenth President. I am grateful to my colleagues for their trust and confidence, and look forward to our collaboration on the Board. I am grateful, too, to Freya Baetens and Ganna Yudkivska, who will continue to act as Vice-Presidents, to Veronika Fikfak, who will join them in that role, and to Daniel Peat, who has agreed to become ESIL’s new Secretary-General.

Here is the link to the Board in its 2025-2026 composition.

An Agenda for 2025-2026 and our annual membership campaign

Much of the Board’s work for the Society remains behind the scenes. And frankly, not all of it is exciting enough to make for a ‘scene’. But I hope we can communicate more about the Board’s priorities and initiatives. This is partly an ongoing listening exercise: the Board is meant to serve the Society, so please continue to get in touch with suggestions and feedback, whether to individual Board members, to me, or via ESIL.secretariat@eui.eu.

Partly in response to such suggestions, the Board in Berlin agreed on an agenda for 2025-2026, which includes a focus on three areas:

• We want to do more to make ESIL a ‘Society for the whole year’, with more activities outside our two signature events, the Research Forum and the Annual Conference.
• We aim to reach out more to sister societies and explore how we can collaborate with them, whether through joint events or by facilitating exchanges between members.
• We will try harder to make our Society a forum for international lawyers based outside academia, i.e. in NGOs, governments, international organisations, and law firms.

We will follow up soon with concrete proposals that fill these (still fairly generic) goals with meaning. And we remain guided by the helpful suggestions outlined in the Report of the Strategic Consultative Panel, entitled ESIL 20+10: A Decade of Opportunity, which remains available on the ESIL website (and is worth your time).

Permit me to end this message with a few encouragements and pointers. In no particular order:

• Make sure to keep an eye open for the Call for Papers for our next ESIL Annual Conference: Málaga is waiting for you.
• Check out the website of the Kraków Research Forum, which will soon open for registration.
• Finally, membership: ESIL now has over 1400 members, and we hope to grow it further. The membership renewal campaign is well underway – please make sure to remain part of the ESIL story, and help us grow! More information on how to renew can be found here.

With my best wishes,

Christian J. Tams

2. Guest Editorial by Jessica Almqvist: Will the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of the Environment through Criminal Law receive widespread support?

Next month, the new Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of the Environment through Criminal Law will be open for signature in the margins of the second meeting of the organisation’s Governmental Committee on the Environment, to be held in Strasbourg on 9-11 December 2025. Considering the growing frustration about the lack of timely and effective collective action to confront the triple planetary crisis of climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss, the Convention is hailed as a landmark treaty. As acknowledged by the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers (CoM) in a resolution adopted already back in 1977, “while recourse to the criminal law in this field should be a last resort, nevertheless use must be made of it when other measures are not observed or are ineffective or inadequate”. The drafters’ ambition to give domestic criminal justice systems a more solid legal basis for investigating, prosecuting and sanctioning criminal activities causing substantial environmental damage. The treaty holds the promise of seeking to reverse the disturbing trend of rising environmental crimes around the world due to the enormous financial gains to be made by engaging in illicit waste management and disposal, illicit deforestation and trade in wildlife, to name but a few. According to Europol, “environmental crime has become a key threat to global security”.

Whether the new treaty will represent a real turning point is too soon to tell. The previous attempt to legislate within the auspices of the Council of Europe for the purpose of empowering domestic courts to investigate, prosecute and sanction environmental crimes failed. The Council of Europe treaty that bore the identical name – Convention on the Protection of the Environment through Criminal Law – adopted in 1988 only received 3 ratifications and never entered into force. According to the terms of the new treaty (art. 53.3), at least “10 Signatories, including at least eight member States of the Council of Europe” are needed for the new Convention to enter into force. Besides the need for support by the organisation’s own member States, also “nonmember States which have participated in its elaboration and the European Union” (art. 53.1) may speed up this process by acceding to it. This puts the plans of Canada, Holy See, Japan, Mexico and USA (all observer states) as well as the EU, which were part of the drafting committee into the limelight. EU states are expected to proceed rather rapidly considering the EU Environmental Crime Directive (2024), which must be transposed by all these states by 21 May 2026 (art. 28.1). Their incentives to proceed rapidly in this regard could also be facilitated by the fact that they shall continue to apply EU rules governing these matters in their mutual relations (art. 5.1.2).

However, even if the new treaty is to obtain widespread support among EU states, it remains primarily a European-centred effort. Even though non-member states, under certain conditions, may become parties to the Convention (art. 54), and even if the Convention extends jurisdiction of domestic courts to crimes of nationals committed abroad (art. 33), it is limited in reach. Combatting environmental crime effectively ultimately requires a global legal framework considering the transnational nature of environmental crimes. Even so, a rapid entry into force of this treaty and the number of states becoming parties to it will have positive repercussions on other similarly important initiatives, such as Vanuatu’s proposal to amend the Rome Statute by including ‘ecocide’, submitted to the ICC Assembly of States Parties in December 2024.

3. Meet an ESIL member – Xuan W. Tay

Meet Xuan W. Tay, Professor of Public International Law at the Freie Universität Berlin and member of the local organising team of the 2025 ESIL Annual Conference in Berlin.

4. What’s Going On?

ESIL Membership 2026: Renew Now!

Starting from 1 November 2025, scholars, practitioners, judges, researchers, and students are once again invited to join or renew their membership and become part of ESIL’s vibrant international law community throughout 2026 and beyond.

ESIL Guidelines for the Diversity of Conference and Panel Speakers

The “ESIL Guidelines for the Diversity of Conference and Panel Speakers” outline the European Society of International Law’s commitment to fostering diversity, equality, and inclusion across its academic events. It stresses the importance of assembling speaker panels that reflect a wide range of identities, experiences, and professional backgrounds, acknowledging that speaking opportunities are crucial for visibility and career development within international law.

The guidelines set out practical measures for organisers, including consideration of gender, race, ethnicity, geography, and career stage when selecting speakers; ensuring representation from relevant regions in region-focused panels; avoiding overrepresentation from the same institution; and encouraging proactive steps such as issuing early invitations, ensuring accessibility, and offering support.

Through these principles, ESIL seeks to promote an inclusive, respectful, and equitable environment that strengthens collaboration and advances the field of international law.

ESIL Annual Conference 2026 – “International Law and Conflicts: An Enduring Tension?” (Málaga, 3-5 September 2026)

The preparations for the 21st Annual ESIL Conference are well underway.

The Programme Committee is working diligently to ensure an engaging and enriching program that reflects the Society’s commitment to excellence in international law scholarship. Further details, including the publication of the Call for Papers, will be shared in due course.

We look forward to welcoming you and fostering meaningful discussions during this important event.

ESIL Research Forum 2026 – “Sustainable International Law. Reconciling Stability and Change”  (Kraków,9-10 April 2026)

The 2026 ESIL Research Forum, set to take place on 9–10 April 2026 in Kraków, will be hosted by the Centre for Advanced Sustainability Studies and the Jagiellonian University.

This unique forum is designed to foster rich discussions on “Sustainable International Law. Reconciling Stability and Change”, and it will delve deep into how international law can maintain legal certainty while effectively regulating the social, economic, and environmental transformations of our volatile world.

Visit https://esil.cass.science/ for more information on the 2026 ESIL Research Forum: registrations are opening soon.

5. ESIL Lectures and ESIL Teaching Corner Webinars

The ESIL Lecture Series hosts broadcasts of presentations on international law topics held at partner institutions, allowing the presentation to reach a wider audience of ESIL members and non-members alike.
Recordings of the ESIL lectures are available on the ESIL YouTube Channel.

To propose an ESIL lecture, please refer to the Guidelines.

Watch the latest contribution to the ESIL Lecture Series: Adam Bodnar’s keynote lecture on Reconstructing International Law at the opening of the ESIL Annual Conference 2025.

In today’s era of permacrisis, engaging new generations in the study of international law is more important than ever.

The ESIL Teaching Corner Webinar Series seeks to fill a critical gap: while much attention is given to what should be taught, very little focuses on how to teach international law effectively. These webinars will explore innovative teaching models—such as moot courts, legal clinics, and even creative approaches like films and theatre—while fostering academic dialogue on pedagogy.

The next webinar on “Mooting International Law” is scheduled on 21 November. Click here for more information, and visit this page for the recordings of the previous sessions.

6. ESIL Book Series

ESIL Book Series publishes high-quality volumes on various international law themes. The good news is that the ESIL Board has broadened the scope of the ESIL Book Series beyond the themes of ESIL Annual Conferences and ESIL Joint Events.

Proposals based on IG events, other ESIL events, and ESIL members’ proposals within the scope of the Book Series are welcome. Potential editors are welcome to contact the General Editor to help shape the future of ESIL scholarly publications.

7. ESIL Proceedings (former ESIL Paper Series)

The ESIL Proceedings feature papers presented at ESIL events (Annual Conferences, Research Fora, and Interest Group events). Publication in the ESIL Proceedings enables authors to disseminate their work widely and reach broader audiences without the usual delays associated with more traditional means of publication. Publication in the ESIL Proceedings does not prevent the subsequent publication of papers in academic journals or edited collections.

ESIL Proceedings are included in the EUI CADMUS Research Repository, and all the papers presented at previous events until 2024 are available here.

For more information, please send a message to esil.papers@gmail.com.

8. News from Interest Groups

ESIL Interest Groups are a vital part of the Society’s success and activities. A list of the groups is available on the ESIL website.

The IGs are organising events throughout the year, along with pre-research forum and pre-annual conference workshops. More information can be found here.