'Measuring Loss in Wrongful Trading Cases' and 'The Effects of Brexit on European Union Citizenship'

 A sandwich lunch will be available from 12.00 in the area outside the IECL Teaching Room.

Starting at 12:30, there will be two presentations by Academic Visitors to the IECL: Dr Jennifer Trinks and Adèle Kauffmann.

The Seminar will conclude by 14:00.

Please send any access requirements to the IECL Administrator.

Dr Jennifer Trinks

Measuring Loss in Wrongful Trading Cases

In many jurisdictions, cases of wrongful trading are not simple for courts to resolve. For example, under German law practitioners find it impossible to measure the loss experienced by the company’s creditors, while by contrast the UK Insolvency Act 1986 simply allows courts to order directors “to make such contribution (if any) to the company’s assets as the court thinks proper”. Such wide judicial discretion in England might, at first glance, seem like a promising way around difficult and costly calculations. Nonetheless, English courts still take the actual increase in net deficiency as a starting point from which to exercise their discretionary powers. What makes their calculations manageable, seems to be less the discretion granted, and more the general approach to loss determination under English private law – a maybe neglected aspect in comparative law, which this presentation explores.

Adèle Kauffmann

The effects of Brexit on European Union Citizenship

Effective from 31 January 2020, Brexit cannot avoid, either upstream or downstream, questions relating to EU citizenship. First, EU citizenship is a question because of the scale of the rights initially attached to EU citizenship in the withdrawal agreement. The destiny of each right and of the persons who used to benefit from these rights is indicative of many of the shortcomings still facing the EU. Second, Brexit, like other phenomena such as the commodification of Member State nationality, is symptomatic of a crisis of EU citizenship. Indeed, it shows the limits of the link between EU citizenship and Member State nationality and invites reflection on the state of the triangular link between the EU, the Member States and EU citizens. Brexit therefore opens the way to a search for the exact nature of the potentialities of this citizenship, the constant construction of which could lead it to the fundamental status that it is destined to become.