Dr. Francisco Fonseca
Francisco Fonseca, Professor of Public International Law and International Relations at the University of Valladolid and director of its Institute of European Studies until his retirement in 2026, Professor of European Law at CEU-San Pablo University and Numerary Member of the Royal European Academy of Doctors (READ), acted as host of the 11th Annual Meeting on European Case Law, organised by the Spanish section of the European Law Institute and held at the Faculty of Law of the University of Valladolid. The academic delivered one of the two opening lectures of the event. The other was given by Francisco Lledó, Professor of Civil Law at the University of Deusto and Corresponding Member of the Royal Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation.
A profound expert in Community law, Fonseca took part in the negotiation of the Maastricht Treaty and the Treaty of Amsterdam of the European Union, as well as in the convention that drafted the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. He was Head of the Representation of the European Commission Office in Spain between 2009 and 2015, the year in which he returned to Brussels as Deputy Director-General for Justice and Consumers. In September 2018, he returned to Madrid, once again as Head of the European Commission Office in Spain.
The meeting, led by Fonseca, brought together more than 100 specialists and scholars of the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights. On this occasion, a special round table on property registry law was devoted to the so-called eIDAS Regulation, of 23 July 2014, on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market, with the participation of property registrars specialising in this field. These annual meetings have been held since 2016 in different Spanish cities: Madrid, Granada, Elche, Seville, Valencia, Toledo, Zaragoza and Valladolid, and, as a consequence of Covid, online in two editions.
Fonseca is a researcher at the Institute for European Studies of the Free University of Brussels and president of the European Movement in Castile and León. His academic research focuses on the institutional law of the European Union, financial issues in the international and European spheres, and the European Area of Freedom, Security and Justice. He joined the READ in October 2024 with the speech “The Rule of Law in the European Union: from a Political Value to Its Financial Dimension”, in which he analysed the economic consequences of member states of the European area undermining respect for democratic rules.
