On 8-10 July, 2024, public law scholars from around the world gathered in Madrid for the annual conference of the International Society of Public Law - the ICON-S, hosted this year by IE University. The theme of the conference "The Future of Public Law: Resilience, Sustainability, and Artificial Intelligence," attracted more than 2000 participants, making it the largest gathering in the history of ICON-S.
Vestert Borger, Simona Demková, and Melanie Fink from the Europa Institute joined the event with presentations across several panels.
On 8 July, the first day of the conference, Melanie Fink and Simona Demková co-organised a panel on "Safeguarding the Right to Good Administration in the Age of AI," - a continuation of the conversation started under their successful blog post symposium of last November, published on the Digi-Con Blog (see here). This panel addressed concerns with and possibilities for the uses of AI technologies by public administrations from different perspectives, covering the role of frontline administrators (by Marco Almada from the EUI); the duty to give reasons and transparency obligations (by Teresa Pareja Sanchez from University of Castilla-La Mancha); possibilities for damages in this context (by Giulia Gentile from Essex Law School), the interplay between the AI Act's human-centered requirements and good administration (by Simona Demková) and the broader picture of emerging disruptions in checks and balances in the European digital administrative state by (Filipe Brito Bastos from NOVA School of Law).
Later that day, Melanie joined a panel on "Assessing the resilience of fundamental rights vis-à-vis EU digital regulation" with Jerome De Cooman, Ljupcho Grozdanovski, Angelica Fernandez, and Francesca Palmiotto, where she discussed the case of border technology. The presentation was based on her recent work on "Robo Swarms and Polygraphs: The Future of European Border Management and its Costs", forthcoming later this year in Philippe De Bruycker, Fabian Lutz, Jorrit Rijpma, Daniel Thym (eds), The Law of Schengen: Limits, Contents and Perspectives after 40 Years. A pre-print is available for download here.
On 9 July, the second day of the conference, Vestert joined a panel on "Governing through Funding in the EU" with Monica Claes, Lilian Tsourdi, Marijn van der Sluis, Bruno de Witte, and Maria Patrin. He presented his work on "The Multiannual Financial Framework and the European Union's System of Government", based on a publication forthcoming in 2025 as part of a book on the topic edited by Lilian Tsourdi and Marijn van der Sluis.
Simona also joined a panel on "Navigating the Evolving Landscape of EU composite procedures" with her presentation discussing the implications of automation and uses of artificial intelligence technologies in composite decision-making procedures. Notably, Simona argued for an expansive interpretation of composite obligations falling onto the developers and deployers of AI, arising from the EU's recently adopted Artificial Intelligence Act, both in light of the constitutional principle of good administration as well as under the needs of effective judicial protection.
Finally, Melanie joined a panel on "Exploring the right to a reasoned and contestable decision in times of increasing administrative algorithmic decision-making" with Janneke Gerards, Herwig Hofmann, and Kätliin Kelder. Melanie presented on "The Duty to Reason and Human Dignity", where she laid out a proposal for a new way of constructing the duty to reason in the automated state.
