Twenty-fifth session of the Academy of European Law was held under the roof of European Public Law Organization between 26 August-15 September 2019 in Greece. Our Faculty PhD student, Gizem Gültekin dr.Várkonyi participated in the Academy for the second time, in order to fulfill one of the requirements for receiving an Intensive International Master of Law in European Public Law (IILLM) degree.

After two weeks of intensive courses offered by the Academy and during the Annual Reunion of the European Group on Public Law, our student received her IILLM diploma after successfully defending her thesis entitled “Implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation on Personal Household Robots”.

The thesis defense was particularly exciting and full of experience for Ms. Gültekin dr.Várkonyi. The defense is organized as 10 minutes of presentation and 10 minutes of questions delivered by the Thesis Committee in which members were Professor Gordon Anthony, President of the Academy; Professor Rui Lanceiro, and Professor Spyridon Vlachoupoulos from Kapodistrian University and the member of the Greek Data Protection Authority. After the presentation, the Thesis Committee delivered several questions related to the student’s work. Many constructive criticisms then followed the QA session. The discussion followed by a secret evaluation of the Committee on scoring the student’s work and a general evaluation on whether delivering or rejecting the degree. Our student received her diploma at the end of the Conference from Prof. Anthony.

All in all, two important aspects of the IILLM program must be stressed for the future students from Szeged: First, the evaluation of the thesis committee could be very helpful to shape the PhD work or any other scientific research presented as a thesis. Second, the whole procedure and especially the defense is some sort of a simulation of a PhD defense. From these point of views, the IILLM Program entirely worths participating.

Step by step guideline on how to obtain LLM in European Public Law title at the EPLO will be soon available.