Third Co-operation Program in the Legal Field and Seminar on “EU and Fundamental Rights – A Complicated Relationship”

The seminar on “EU and Fundamental Rights – A Complicated Relationship”, will take place on April 5th to 8th from 6:00 to 8:30 pm, in the auditorium of the Civil Service Training Centre located on Alameda Dr. Carlos D' Assumpção n.° 322-362, Cheng Feng Commercial Centre, 7th floor. This first seminar will mark the beginning of the third Macao SAR - EU Co-operation Program in the Legal Field. The 3rd Co-operation Programme in the Legal Field between Macao SAR and the European Union, runs for 48 months, from November 2015 till November 2019, has as its main objective to “Promote the Development and Modernisation of the Macao SAR’s Legal System”. The execution of the Co-operation Programme is coordinated by the Legal Affairs Bureau, together with other entities and public departments of the Macao SAR, namely the Legal and Judicial Training Centre, the Economic Services and the Institute of European Studies of Macao. The current seminar is co-organised by the Legal and Judicial Training Centre and the Institute of European Studies of Macao. It will feature as a speaker Professor Miguel Poiares Maduro, Professor of the European University Institute, Visiting Professor of the Yale University, the College of Europe, the Catholic University of Portugal and the New University of Lisbon. This seminar will be conducted in Portuguese with simultaneous translation into Cantonese. Amongst other topics, the following items will be analysed: 1. The Origin and History of Fundamental Rights in the EU 2. The Scope of Fundamental Rights in the EU 3. Democracy and Fundamental Rights in the EU 4. Social Justice, Crisis and Fundamental Rights in the EU In addition to the legal training, the dissemination of legal issues has been one of the cornerstone activities under the Co-operation Programme. In order to take advantage of this seminar’s topic on human rights, a special edition of the Macau Law Journal (MLJ) regarding the application of seven of the core international human rights treaties in the Macao SAR will be displayed to the general public. In these publications, it is possible to find the main documents related to the international obligations derived from the application of these treaties to the Macao SAR, as well as a short record of policies, normative acts and practices concerning the protection of human rights in the Macao SAR. These documents were assembled in a systematic manner in the Chinese, Portuguese and English languages, with the aim of producing a ground-breaking compilation with user-friendly accessible material. The MLJ Special Edition aims to provide legal advisers, law students and researchers with a useful working tool, in order to enhance and to encourage the study of Human Rights in the Macao SAR as well as to disseminate them among the population in general.