In 1995, the Faculty of Law of Maastricht University launched a new and ambitious study programme called the European Law School. The programme has been created to respond to the demand, increasingly expressed by legal practitioners of various kinds, for better integration of European, international and foreign law into the law curriculum and for a new type of high-quality law graduate capable to deal with international legal complexity. Those are the reasons why we should like to present to you this new programme of legal education and the profile of its future graduates.
Students pursue a programme based on carefully described, concrete problems that arise in practice.
They generally work with small groups of fellow students. Attention is given not only to scientific knowledge but also to the practical skills needed in legal work. The international character of the Maastricht Law Faculty is shown by the multinational composition of its teaching staff and by the large number of cooperation agreements with foreign universities allowing for student mobility to and from Maastricht. The law curriculum in Maastricht itself has become gradually become international and European. The creation of the European Law School programme has crowned a long series of initiatives in this respect.