Otmar Seul

Otmar Seul, born on August 30, 1943 in Trier, Germany, taught at Paris Ouest-Nanterre-La Défense (Paris X-Nanterre) from October 1989 until September 2011. A professor of German law, he founded in 1994-95, in cooperation with his German homolog Werner Merle, the famous integrated course in French and German law, uniting the universities of Paris-Ouest- Nanterre- La Défense (France) and Potsdam (Germany). He made this course the pivot of a network of cooperating European universities in jurisprudence opening previously unknown forms of internationalization of study and research. He had an even more novel idea: the creation, since 2004, of French-German summer universities with third countries in and outside of Europe. His research on industrial democracy and the participation of workers in companies joined in an intercultural dimension – Franco-German and European.

Co-founder of bi-national courses, a pioneer in the field of internationalization of studies and research

After concluding his studies of history and roman linguistics at the Johannes Gutenberg university in Mainz (Germany), his humanities studies at the university Paris-Descartes and completing his doctoral in economic and social sciences (1986) at the Carl von Ozzietzky university in Oldenburg (Germany) under the direction of Eberhard Schmidt concerning the reception of the right of direct and collective expression and other new rights of workers (the Auroux laws) by the French unions (1982-85), Otmar Seul consecrated himself notably in France to the science of jurisprudence as well as to Franco-German and European university exchanges.

Double Courses and Franco-German integrated courses in jurisprudence

At Nanterre Otmar Seuil has been the originator of the development of the double bilingual courses in French and German law (established in 1986) going beyond the 1st cycle (DEUG) up to the 3rd cycle (today’s Master) and from its transformation, in its partnership with Potsdam, into a French-German integrated course offering a double diploma (1995-95). While offering all these mixed diplomas – more than 25 courses in German law, Paris Ouest-Nanterre-La Défense has become in the 1990’s the premier university in France for teaching German law. Taught in the German language, this program, however, seemed menaced by a shrinking number of students learning the partner language- both in France as in Germany. On March 12, 2001, Otmar Seul translated in a petition addressed to the French and German governments the unrest caused by the hindrances in the policies of cooperation between Paris and Berlin. Favoring a restart of the Franco-German motor, this Appeal de Nanterre was signed by more than a thousand students and teachers and supported by eight former French and German ambassadors as well as all the members of the French-German High Cultural Counsel.

A European Network for University Cooperation

In order to anchor the Franco-German integrated course in the domain of European graduate teaching and research, to further open international careers to graduates and to promote the languages and cultures of French-German jurisprudence in Europe, Otmar Seul conceived and developed since the 1990’s a network of university cooperation (Nanterre network). Established on the basis of the Erasmus-Socrates accords and regrouped today into more than 40 established partnerships, this network (informal) was built in three major stages: Firstly, following the reunification of Germany (1990), the integration of the law faculties of the Humboldt universities of the new federal states; secondly, ivn opening from 2000 to the universities of central and eastern Europe (especially Poland and the Baltic 2004; thirdly, in admitting since 2006 Turkish universities (such as the University of Istanbul, the universities of Galatasaray, Yetilepe, Bilgi) served those in the process of joining the European Union. Regularly organized since 1995, the delegations of partners studied closely during their annual meetings (Prague, Vilnius, Lodz, Riga, Paris, Fribourg (Switzerland), Istanbul, Seville, Barcelona/Andorra, Berlin, Lisbon, Vienna) their needs to adapt their systems of higher education to European standards. These meetings, coupled with a colloquium or study days, led to further reflection over those tendencies toward a harmonization of law in the countries of the European Union. Another innovative idea of Otmar Seul, starting with the enlargement of the European Union in 2004, was the creation of the Franco-German summer universities, especially for the countries of central and eastern Europe, which would focus on the question of European identity and presumptions and politics in the context of European integration and globalization.

Franco-German summer universities with third countries

In Europe

Bernard Cazeneuve, in September 2012 and in accordance with his patronage of the second Franco-German summer university consecrated on energy and environmental law , the minister delegate for European affairs paid homage to a formula of prèrentrée academique whose success cannot be denied and can even claim to have contributed to the spreading of Franco-German cooperation in Europe”. The university Paris Ouest-Nanterre-La Défense has become a pioneer in the material of creating Franco-German and European summer universities in the field of jurisprudence. If the cooperation has proven to be an excellent vector of university exchanges, one can also claim that the Franco-German integrated courses have opened themselves to other European countries, even beyond Europe. The summer universities conceived by Otmar Seul present trumps which render them original in regard to classical academic offerings: Firstly, organized since 2004, these summer universities have proposed meeting – in the first and principle manner of organizing between them, in cooperation with Frankfurt am Main and Vilnius, each year in the Lithuania capital, in following the main lines of the harmonization process of legislation and practices in course within the European Union. Essentially anchored in the domain of comparative European law, they not only contribute to mutual legal comprehension, but also to the discovery of the social dimensions of the countries. The diversity of events – a large area is made for historians, political scientists, economists and sociologists – thus permitting a multi-discipline approach in the handling of legal questions and sometimes revealing problems heretofore unsuspected.

Secondly, the summer universities lend themselves to innovative pedagogical steps. Defined as an open forum for dialogue, they are susceptible of contributing a better perception of law and to an intellectual enrichment of students and doctoral candidates, as a interconnection between teachers-researchers and professionals. These workshops permit an intensive implication of young researchers into taking interactive steps. For certain students at the Master level the works are based are founded on preliminary research in the domain of their future thesis, this research being favored by a close and beneficial cooperation with a Franco-German doctoral college, which will be enlarged at the European level in the future. Thirdly, the summer universities are considered as an occasion for transmitting, as much as possible, national legal cultures through intermediaries in their national languages. Behind this concept lies the idea of a Europe affirming its linguistic and cultural diversity. Another summer university organized with the University of Potsdam and the State University of Belorussia since 2011 in Minsk, the capital of Belorussia, and a member of the Community of Independent States (CIS), was asked to reflect upon the evolution of law in the domain of European jurisprudence within the larger framework of those countries not belonging to the European Union. In 2014 a novel itinerate summer university in the Balkans led to Paris Ouest-Nanterre- La Défense and Münster (Germany) to cooperate with the University Saints Cyrille and Méthode of Skopje (Macedonia), and the University of Pristina (Kosovo) and the European University of Tirana (Albania). For those countries in the Balkans the European perspective (of accessing the EU in the future) is the guarantee for the irreversibility of the political, economic and social reforms which must take place if there is to be peace and stability in the region.

In the Maghreb and Latin America

The “delocalization of the campus via the summer university”(O. Seul) is not henceforth limited to the area of Europe. Having been invited by the Robert Bosch Foundation and the UFA to work on an “interdisciplinary approach to sciences publiques : civil law, administrative law, politics, economy, society and comparative law”, Paris Ouest-Nanterre and Potsdam have launched in 2013 in Tunis, in cooperation with the University of Tunis-El Manar, a French-German dialog with the countries of the Maghreb in proposing: - To analyze legal, political, economic and socio-cultural evolutions in Tunisia at the present and, as far as possible, in other countries of the Maghreb on the way to reestablishment; - To examine in a multi-disciplinary approach (France, Germany, the Maghreb countries) the historical experiences of the different countries in the domain in question, in order to bring out points of comparison and convergence which could aliment the reflection over public policies better adapted to the situation in the Maghreb. - To enlarge the debate in the Mediterranean region, situated at the crossroads of European and North African law, and, in particular, concerning the conditions of installing a common framework of cooperation.

In 2013, the Nanterre Model was also exported for the first time to a country in Latin America: a Franco-German-Peruvian summer university concerning “Democracy and the State of Law” was created at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica of Peru in Lima. Two innovations marked this demonstration: not only it extend beyond the university framework and open itself to the civil society, but – as to the proposition of Eda A. Rivas Franchini, Minister of Justice of Peru – saw her recognized in her beneficial reform mission regarding highly placed functionaries, notably in regard to the defense of human rights, of governance in state social law and of democratic citizenship.

Research Works on industrial democracy and the participation of workers in Europe

Otmar Seul insured at Paris Ouest and at the partner universities of the Nanterre Network the teaching of courses in labor law, German jurisprudence and German and European civilization.

The intercultural dimension – Franco-German and European – marks these research works. In his thesis on the “right of direct expression of workers” introduced by the lois Auroux in France and its reception by the French unions (reedited in 2012 under the title Arbeitnehmerparticipation im Urteil der französischen Gewerkschaften: Sozialreform unter der Präsidentschaft Francois Mitterands (1982-1985)), he explains the interest West German research on the reform of enterprises in France by the deficit balance of the German system of co-determination in the sense of participation at the work place. The transposition of the idea of industrial democracy in social legislation and the practice of social dialog in France, in Germany and the rest of the countries in the European Union remain the main motive behind the works of Otmar Seul. His book from 2011 on the direct participation of workers in the decisions of the enterprises in France and Germany: theories, laws and practices is understood as a synthesis of his academic activities between 1968 and 2000 (a subject developed for the first time in 1968 in view of his post-doctoral thesis directed by the research obtained at the University of Paris Ouest-Nanterre – La Défense).

His recent works have been consecrated on harmonizing the rights of workers in the countries of the European Union. The collective work which he edited in 2009 in cooperation with Peter Jansen – L’Europe élargie: La participation des salaries aux decisions dans l’enterprise. Traditions à l’ouest, innovations à l’est? – reveals a strong tendency towards implementing a system of representing union authority (a monist system), this then being detrimental to the dualist system adopted by France and Germany, which is based on the participation by delegation on the complementary systematic between institutions .

The editorial activities of Otmar Seul reflect his intercultural and interdisciplinary orientation: He is the founder-director (1994) of the collection Allemand juridique/Langues et cultures juridiques et politques européennes, edited by the Franco-German program at the law department of the University of Paris Ouest-Nanterre-La Défense, and co-founder and co-director (2012) of the collection Cultures juridiques et politiques in the editions Peter Lang: Berne, Berlin, Francfort s. M, New York, Oxford, Vienne, in collaboration with Stephanie Dijoux, his successor as co-director of the integrated courses in Paris Ouest and Potsdam.

Efforts For a Citizenship at the University

A partisan of student participation in the administration of the Franco-German integrated courses, Otmar Seul developed from 1989-90 a system of student representation based on elections at each level of education, of delegates presented to those teachers responsible and to the administration of student grievances as well as their propositions regarding an improvement of the course functions and also including their conditions of study.

Under the impulsion of Otmar Seul, an Association of Graduat Courses in French-German law Paris Ouest/Potsdam (ACFA), created in March 2008. It is charged with promoting the double-course and the mutual assistance among its members as well as contributing to further reflection upon the stakes of European integration.

Distinguished On Both Sides of the Rhine

In light of his decisive contribution to a novel program and for having formed generations of professionals of law in the service of Franco-German relations, Otmar Seul was honored in March 2010 with one of the highest distinctions of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Verdienstkreuz 1. Klasse, by the Ambassador Reinhard Schäfers, at the Hôtel de Beauharnais, official residence of the German Ambassador in Paris. This distinction is not the first one awarded to Otmar Seul, who was also given the title of doctor juris honoris causa in 2002 by the University of Potsdam. He was also, by decrees from December 18, 2002 and November 14, 2006, respectively made a knight of the l’ordre des Palmes académiques and knight of the l’ordre national du Mérite de la République francaise.

Also see

• Interview donnée par le Professeur Otmar Seul à l'ACFA (Association des diplômés des cursus franco-allemands en droit Paris Ouest/Potsdam), le 16 mai 2013
• «Le professeur Otmar Seul reçoit la croix d’Officier de l’Ordre du Mérite» sur paris.diplo.de
• Site des formations franco-allemandes et européennes de l'Université Paris Ouest