Our scholars 2020 – Addis Tammiku

What is your legal background, your current occupation and country of work?
I have an LLM in PIL (Private International Law?) from the University of Aberdeen. I keep myself up to date with recent PIL developments by reading relevant articles and attending conferences. I am also an associate member of the Centre for Private International Law. So far, I have been focusing on jurisdiction and applicable law in matters relating to family law and Business transactions.

How do you use European law in your current work?
Many judgments/decisions that I am drafting have a “foreign” element, which means European Union (EU) regional instruments on Private International Law (PIL) must be applied.

What was your motivation for attending this particular event?
I applied for the scholarship for two reasons. Firstly, because I knew that ERA courses have very high level of quality, but I haven’t been able to participate because of the fairly high prices. Secondly, because I studied Private International Law and work as a court lawyer (assistant judge) in the Court of Appeal, which requires a high level of knowledge of European regulations (PIL included). Therefore, this scholarship allowed me to participate and to gain better knowledge of something that I really like and is useful for my everyday work.
I want to elaborate that being a court lawyer in Estonia means that you are on a career path to become a judge. Unfortunately, the salaries are not that competitive and the Court of Appeal is not willing to fund any courses.

How did you benefit from the scholarship?
The webinar on cross-border insolvency proceedings was extremely beneficial and timely. The course itself was divided into parts which allowed to participants to recall the fundamentals of insolvency proceedings before moving to more complex issues of cross-border insolvency proceedings. Lecturers were excellent, with diverse backgrounds and very well prepared.
In the three days, I was able to have a logical overview of the current applicable regulation, relevant case law and interpretation of articles which might be tricky to apply in practice. As my work is to draft judgments and decisions for the civil collegium in the Court of Appeal and to present my legal opinion, I am now able to do my work much better and give more accurate opinions. Also, the number of insolvency cases involving foreign elements are expected to rise in the Court of Appeal as a result of the recent worldwide negative events in the economy.