60th Congress

Welcome to Budapest

A UIA congress is always a special time for knowledge sharing, conviviality and openness to other cultures, with no set pattern or single mind-set. Budapest is a very modern city that is also steeped in history, which needs to be discovered at a gentle walking pace. It is not very far from the banks of the Danube and the modern hotels in the heart of Buda and Pest to the city’s historic sites.

One of the main themes, that of compliance, will be making headlines as the transposition of the Fourth European Directive of May 20, 2015 on the prevention of money laundering and terrorism financing starts. Lawyers, who are guardians of civil liberties, will be discussing the difficult course to be navigated among investigative transparency, privacy protection and business confidentiality.

The second main theme is the protection of personal data, a subject that is as sensitive as it is topical, in a digital universe where the dissemination of information is instant and very difficult to control, in particular when confidential documents are sent electronically.

These two sessions will be attended by experts and prominent figures who will share their experiences and delve deeper into the fundamental issues raised by these subjects. Another major event deserves your attention: the meeting of the International Bar Leaders Senate, a venue for discussions on our current and future practices, which is reserved for the presidents of lawyers’ organisations.

A UIA congress is also a great place to make friends and to forge lasting business relationships. The UIA takes care to ensure that efficient work goes hand in hand with the pleasure of being together. A quality social and leisure programme has been designed that will enable you to discover the many charms of Budapest.

We have all worked very hard to ensure that the Budapest Congress is a success, but this will not be possible without you, so we hope that as many of you as possible will join us in Budapest.

Jean-Jacques UETTWILLER

UIA President

Dear Colleagues, Dear Friends,

In my capacity as Congress President and also as a Vice- President of the Hungarian Bar Association and the Budapest Bar Association, I very much look forward to welcoming you all to the UIA 2016 Congress that will be held in our beautiful city of Budapest. Budapest, like Hungary, has a long, rich and often bloody history, largely due to its location on the crossroads between East and West, as well as North and South.

The city was first named Aquincum, and was originally a Celtic settlement that became the Roman capital of Lower Pannonia. Nomadic Hungarian tribes arrived in the 9th century and, although the Mongols pillaged their first settlement in 1241 and 1242, by the 15th century, the rebuilt city had become one of the centres of Renaissance humanist culture. After 150 years of Ottoman rule, the area experienced increasing prosperity in the 18th and 19th centuries, and Budapest became a global city after its unification in 1873. It was also the second capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

When you visit Budapest, I hope you will agree that the richness of our history is only matched by the beauty of the city itself. Budapest has many World Heritage sites, which include the banks of the Danube, the Buda Castle complex, Andrássy Avenue, Heroes’ Square and the Millennium Underground Railway, which is the secondoldest metro line in the world. In addition, the city has around 80 geothermal springs and the world’s largest thermal water cave system, so please do not forget to bring your swimming suits!

Both the Hungarian Bar Association and the Budapest Bar Association are based in the city, and all of their members are committed to safeguarding the fundamental principles that the UIA strives to uphold and maintain. These days, our legal community also has an international flavour, of which we are very proud. We place great importance on increasing and maintaining our integration with the global legal community, which is why it is an absolute pleasure for us to host the 2016 UIA Congress in our capital city.

I hope that you will not only take away somenew legal expertise, perspectives and business contacts from our city, but also many fond memories of the sights and experiences that Budapest and traditional Hungarian hospitality have to offer.

Welcome to Budapest!

András SZECSKAY

President of the Congress