A two-day international conference entitled Parliaments in Europe was held at the Deák Ferenc Faculty of Law and Political Sciences of Széchenyi István University. The event, organised as part of the Parliamentarism Day conference series, brought together national and foreign lawyers, researchers and experts.

The Centre for Parliamentary Studies (PKK) of the Faculty of Law of Széchenyi University organised for the ninth time the Parliamentarism Day conference, which was held for the first time on the Győr campus with the support of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. The event is organised every year in early May to commemorate the beginning of Hungary's modern democracy, on 2 May 1990, when the first democratically elected Parliament was held. This year, the 20th anniversary of Hungary's accession to the European Union also served as a theme for the conference, which was given the title and theme Parliaments in Europe.

The Centre of Parliamentary Studies (PKK) operates as an independent research unit within the Department of Constitutional Law and Political Science of the Deák Ferenc Faculty of Law and Political Science. Its aim is to strengthen the research profile of the faculty and to support the professional development of the faculty members by means of proposals, publications, participation in academic conferences and lectures.

The Parliaments in Europe conference featured presentations from five university lecturers, and researchers and experts from around a dozen countries. The majority of the research presented will be published in two academic journals edited by the PKK, Parliamentary Review and International Journal of Parliamentary Studies. "Since 2016, we have been organising the conference in different venues, such as the Parliament House, with different thematic focuses. This is the first year that we have put together a two-day programme, with the first day in Hungarian and the second day in English," said Dr Zsolt Szabó, one of the organisers of the event and member of the Centre of Parliamentary Studies. "What is also special about this year's forum is that it was attended not only by academics, researchers and lawyers, but also by representatives of national parliamentary offices from Slovakia, Austria and the Czech Republic, who gave insight into the functioning of their legislative bodies in a round-table discussion," he added.

Prof. Dr. Péter Smuk, Dean (left) and Dr. Zsolt Szabó, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre of Parliamentary Studies (Photo: Máté Dudás)

Dr. Péter Smuk, Dean of the Faculty and Head of the Centre of Parliamentary Studies, is proud that Győr hosted the conference this year. As he said, it is a great honour to welcome so many international experts, who will get to know the scientific work at the university, the competitive results of the PKK and from whom the Hungarian colleagues can learn a lot. "The main topics of the second day of the English-language session were the use of artificial intelligence in the Parliament, the current challenges of the rule of law and the future of the European Parliament. In addition to the young generation of researchers, the conference was also attended by experienced, older professors, creating a multi-generational dialogue," he explained. He added that the opportunity to develop personal international contacts is the real value of the event, as the professional meeting can be followed by joint publications, further conferences and research programmes in the future.

Prof. Dr. Jörn von Lucke from Zeppelin University in Germany gave a presentation on the parliamentary application of artificial intelligence (Photo: András Adorján)