Thank you everybody for coming on this afternoon for this panel discussion.

Really very pleased to welcome today,

Professor Shundukh Scott from Oxford, Professor Steve Pears, from Essex, and our very

own Professor Captain Barnard, to really just join us in the hopefully be a relatively free-flowing

discussion around the courts. in a hopefully be a relatively free-flowing discussion

around the court's opinion 2013 on EU accession,

to the ECHR, as shown up it very vividly

in her Verhasson's blog,

the bombshell delivered before Christmas.

As we were talking earlier, it's an opinion that it's very hard to find many or any body willing to defend.

So on that basis, I'm not sure whether we're going to get to mount a case for the defence

or whether we'll just carry on the prosecution case.

But it is substant very important, politically very

significant, and I can't think of three better people to help explore and unpack the different dynamics of the opinion.

So what I'm planning on doing is simply moderating the discussion.

Please, this is an opportunity for you to engage, ask questions along the way,

as well as our speakers are developing their themes and arguments.

And I think if we just maybe try and get some things on the table at the outset,

thinking about what did the court decide and what did it feel was wrong with the agreement

for the EUTC to the ECHR.

I mean, Steve, what for you is the, are the high-length pieces of the opinion that are the problematic things that we need to explore?

Well I think a lot of it is problematic.

...