Our students of media law win the regional rounds

16.12.2018.

The team of the ELTE Faculty of Law competed and won twice as defendants and twice as claimants at the Budapest Preliminary Rounds of the Price Media Law Moot Court Competition that took place in the Egyetem Square building of ELTE, between 5 and 7 December 2018. Subsequently, the ELTE team overcame the team of the University of Bucharest as defendants in the play-off semi-final, as well as the University of Tirana as claimants in the final. After six matches, in which they gave 100% performance, the ELTE students won first place in the South-East Europe Regional Rounds, and qualified to the final to be held in Oxford.

In the academic year 2018-2019, this was the fourth time that the team of the ELTE Faculty of Law entered the Monroe E. Price Media Law Moot Court Competition, the most prestigious international moot competition in media law and free speech. Eight regional rounds are organised before the International Rounds of the competition to be held in Oxford. The Hungarian teams entered the South-East Europe Regional Rounds hosted by ELTE at the invitation of the University of Oxford this year.

In the last academic year, the ELTE students were able to qualify from the regional rounds to the world final, where they were among the sixteen best teams in the world. Due to the continuous use of technical language in English, the students’ knowledge improved considerably during drawing up the written memorials, and was further increased during their preparation for the oral round. At the moot court competition they had to tackle a legal case both from the position of the applicants (Unger Ras and UConnect) and that of the respondent, which was this time a fictional state (Magentonia). Nine teams from the region submitted written memorials to the regional round. Each team had 45 minutes to present their oral pleadings and convince an international panel of three judges with their arguments, who were free to ask questions from the speakers. Members of the Jury at the South-East Europe Regional Rounds were, among others, Péter Paczolay, Hungarian judge of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), András Baka, the former Hungarian judge of the ECtHR, Goran Selanec, justice of the Constitutional Court of Croatia, Miklós Haraszty, who was the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media for two terms, Ewa Galewska, media lawyer at the University of Wrocław, as well as András Koltay, member of the National Media and Infocommunications Authority and Rector of the National University of Public Service.

Here are the final results of the regional rounds:

Eötvös Loránd University
University of Tirana
University of Bucharest
University of Szeged

Best memorials:

Eötvös Loránd University
University of Tirana

Best Oralists:

Péter Sziládi, Eötvös Loránd University
Levente Szegedi, University of Szeged

The top three teams of the South-East Europe Regional Rounds have qualified for the international rounds. The prizes were handed over by János Bóka, State Secretary for EU and International Judicial Cooperation at the Ministry of Justice. In his welcome speech, he emphasized the importance of moot court competitions for students of law in Hungary.

The International Rounds will be organised with the participation of the best 38 teams at the University of Oxford, from 8 to 12 April 2019.

The members of the ELTE team competing at the Regional Rounds 2018-2019 held in Budapest were: Rebeka Erdősi, Dorina Gyetván, Nóra Kiss, Emese Mező, Péter Sziládi and Attila Tatár. This year, the coach of the ELTE team was again Gergely Gosztonyi, assistant professor at the Department of the History of Hungarian State and Law.

The organisation of the regional rounds and participation in them were supported by the National Programme for Education Development of the Ministry of Justice, the National Media and Infocommunications Authority, the Réti, Várszegi and Partners Law Firm PwC Legal, the Ignác Frank Foundation, and the ELTE Talent Management Council.