Leiden students reach final International and European Tax Moot Court
The team of four students from Tax Law has reached the final of the most prestigious international moot court competition in the field of international and European tax law.
Since September 2019, the Leiden team – consisting of Jorn Steenbergen, Michel Smit, Bas Bots and William Boogert – has been participating in the competition which is organised by the KU Leuven (Belgium). Twenty-four universities from all over the world take part in the competition.
Coaches Esther Huiskers-Stoop and Dirk Broekhuijsen from the Department of Tax Law, together with the Moot Court Department, have set up a programme to supervise students during this competition. The programme consists of three tutorials and four video training sessions. At the tutorials, the students discuss each other’s pleadings and other documents. During the video training sessions, the students practise presenting the facts, formulating arguments and presenting pleadings, and are supervised by a video trainer. The language for the competition is English, so the video training sessions are also in English.
Memorandum
Using a case provided by the organisers, the students first had to write a memorandum; a notice of appeal on behalf of the claimants and a defence from the respondents (the tax authorities). The memorandum was submitted at the beginning of January, and recently the organisation announced that the Leiden team is one of the remaining 16 universities that will take part in the oral finals to be held from 15 to 20 March 2020 in Leuven.
To prepare for the proceedings, the students are currently finalising their pleadings and practising their presentation. It promises to be a very exciting week – not only because of the experience in a real courtroom, but also because each day teams will be leaving the competition. Whatever happens, just taking part in the courtroom proceedings will be a very special experience, testing the written and oral skills of the students to the extreme. We wish the Leiden team the very best of luck!