Rector's Speech
Dear students, dear colleagues!
It gives me a great pleasure to introduce to you the idea of a new academic institution in Prishtina, the European School of Law and Government (ESLG).
In a couple of months, in the Fall of 2010, a group of teachers from Slovenia and Kosovo will start with courses and lectures, and in a couple of years - I hope - the ESLG will grow into a prestigious Kosovo and European university that will produce expertise for the needs of the new country, but also knowledge about Kosovo for Europe.
The idea originates from Slovenia, specifically from the still young, but rather well established European Faculty of Law of Nova Gorica, run by prominent legal experts, professors of international and European law, public administration, real estate law, international relations, diplomacy, foreign policy studies etc.
But in its essence, the initiative is European. The combination of Slovenian and European motivation seems right for the Kosovo academic sphere and for the development of professional and intellectual life in the region: there is a tradition of Slovenian-Kosovar friendship, and Kosovo itself is a paradigmatic European-inspired social and political phenomenon.
The ESLG will provide expertise that is needed and useful for a country embodying a breakthrough development in international relations. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and after the disintegration of authoritarian multinational structures like Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, new approaches and new thinking are necessary. I am sure that Slovenian and Kosovar colleagues will have plenty to discuss under the roof of the new European School of Law and Government.
Prof. Dimitrij Rupel
