In October 2023, DigiCon will host a Symposium on the topic ‘Safeguarding Good Administration in The Age of AI-Driven Administrations’. The Symposium is dedicated to the challenges for public administrations’ compliance with the requirements of good administration where they rely on artificial intelligence technologies.
EU law guarantees good administration as a fundamental right under Article 41 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (CFR). The provision codifies the general principle of EU law developed in the case law of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU). Essentially, good administration reflects the view that the EU is a community based on the rule of law, in which individuals are not subjected to arbitrary administrative decision-making. To benefit from good administration, individuals enjoy certain essential entitlements designed to ensure just and fair administrative procedures.
Article 41 CFR bundles together these rights and obligations, each of which faces distinct challenges in the age of AI-driven administrations. To address these, the Symposium aims to gather insights from an EU administrative law perspective, in search of a suitable framework for safeguarding the right to good administration in the AI context.
We invite expressions of interest to contribute to the Symposium. Contributions may cover the challenges of AI-driven administrations for specific rights guaranteed under Article 41(1) or for broader principles central to good administration, such as transparency and the right to an effective remedy. Possible topics include:
1. the right to have affairs handled impartially, fairly and within reasonable time,
2. the right to be heard,
3. the right to have access to one’s own file and its relationship with the more general right to access to documents and the right of access by data subjects,
4. the right to a reasoned decision,
5. transparency,
6. accountability, and
7. effective remedies.
Expressions of interest should be maximum 300 words and submitted to simona.demkova@digi-con.org by 15 June 2023. The Symposium editors – Simona Demkova, Melanie Fink, and Giulia Gentile – will select a small number of submissions to be worked out into full blog posts. The full blog posts should be between 1.500 and 2.000 words and will have to be submitted by 15 September 2023. The Symposium aims to launch in October 2023.
Contributing authors will also be invited to discuss the insights from the Symposium in an expert roundtable organised in the context of the Digital Constitutionalist Conference (DigiCon III) to be held in the end of 2023 at the EUI/Università degli studi di Firenze in Florence, Italy.
We look forward to hearing from you!
On behalf of the DigiCon,
Simona Demkova, Melanie Fink, Giulia Gentile
(The Scientific Organisers of the DigiCon Symposium)
Simona Demkova
Simona Demková is an Assistant professor of European law at Leiden University (the Netherlands). Her research focuses on European public law, fundamental rights protection and law and technology. Previously she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Luxembourg within the framework of interdisciplinary (law and computer science) project – DILLAN (Digitalisation, Law and Innovation). She completed her PhD thesis titled ‘Effective Review in the Age of Information: The Case-study of Semi-automated Decision-making based on Schengen Information System’ at the University of Luxembourg under the supervision of Prof. Herwig Hofmann. You can find her publications here: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/simona-demkova/publications#tab-3
Melanie Fink
Melanie Fink is Assistant Professor at Leiden University (the Netherlands) and APART-GSK Fellow of the Austrian Academy of Sciences at the Central European University (Austria). She researches and publishes in the areas of EU and public international law, with a focus on the human rights and access to justice, the EU’s role in border control, and accountability in the context of administrative cooperation, including through the use of artificial intelligence systems. She is an active member of various international networks, in particular the European Society of International Law (ESIL) and the Standing Committee of Experts on International Migration, Refugee and Criminal Law (Meijers Committee). You can find her publications here: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/melanie-fink/publications#tab-4).
Giulia Gentile
Giulia Gentile is Fellow in Law at the LSE Law School, having previously worked at Maastricht University and at King’s College London. Her research focuses on EU constitutional, the use of AI in the legal profession and the protection of the right to a fair trial in AI-driven courts. Giulia has co-edited three books and authored more than 30 scientific publications on fundamental rights, EU law enforcement and the legal issues surrounding the use of AI. She has provided expert evidence to the UK Parliament on the protection of fundamental rights in the UK and digital regulation, and to the European Commission on the political rights of the disabled and e-voting procedures. Her research has been cited, among others, by Advocates General at the European Court of Justice, the UK Parliament Joint Committee on Human Rights, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and the Slovenian Constitutional Court. Giulia is a qualified lawyer at the Italian Bar Association and gained legal experience, among others, at the chambers of Judge Lucia Serena Rossi at the European Court of Justice and at the M&A Department of Clifford Chance (Milan).
