OREANDA-NEWS. Estonia lacks researchers who work on legal problems in the field of finance on the presumed level of a research university. The European Banking Institute (EBI) supports the development of this field and experts in Estonia, because the network brings together the competence of institutions that study and carry out research on the problems of EU financial and supervisory authorities.

Through the UT School of Law, the University of Tartu has been named a founding member and academic member of the EBI.

Irene Kull, UT Professor of Civil Law, founding member of the EBI and member of the Academic Board, said that the role of UT in the institute is, first and foremost, to ensure scientific research of the activity of financial institutions, bring together researchers of the field from UT and other Estonian higher education institutions, and support writing doctoral theses about finance. 

Kull admitted that there is not enough financial law competence in Estonia, which is why participating in EBI is crucial to ensure a new generation. “We have excellent doctoral students who have started their research in financial law but, unfortunately, Estonia lacks competence in many narrower fields. For example, it is difficult to find supervisors with the required expertise, which is why the percentage of financial law and financial economic research among other topics is rapidly decreasing. EBI helps significantly compensate the capability which Estonia is short of.”

Kull added that participating in the EBI will definitely initiate improving the relative courses and creating new ones at UT School of Law and School of Economics and Business Administration, which would be a continuation of the already existing cooperation: “The EBI network also enables to find high level partners to initiate joint research projects.”

The mission of participating in the EBI is to bring together all researchers who work in this field in Estonia which would benefit all of Estonia. In addition to researchers and research institutions which work on the jurisprudential research of financial institutions, the institute is interested in cooperation with economists, social scientists and representatives of other fields.

The aim of the European Banking Institute is to establish a network of research institutions, organise its work, distribute research results and initiate discussions among European research communities and practitioners.

The Financial Supervision Authority and the Bank of Estonia have also considered it important to join the founding of EBI. The UT representative in EBI is Associate Professor of Finance Priit Sander.