Professor María Teresa Gil Bazo has been appointed Chair of the group Fundamental Rights of the European Law Institute, at the invitation of the President of the European Law Institute (ELI). This position is exercised jointly with Boštjan Zalar, ad hoc judge of the European Court of Human Rights and president of the European Chapter of the association International Association of Asylum and Migration Judges. 

Professor Gil Bazo and Judge Boštjan Zalar replace Professor Sabino Cassese (Full Professor at the Universities of Urbino, Naples and Rome, and for nine years judge of the Constitutional Court of Italy) and Sir Jeffrey Jowell KCMG KC (director founder of the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law in the United Kingdom and Full Professor emeritus and formerDean of the School Law School of University College London).

The European Law Institute is an independent organization that brings together lawyers and institutions and has as goal the improvement of European law. Commercial Law Its institutional members include the Court of Justice of the EU, the EU Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA), the United Nations Commission for International Law (UNCITRAL), and the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT), as well as the supreme courts of several countries, including the Spanish Supreme Court; professional associations from several countries, such as the committee General de la Abogacía Española; and law firms, such as Uría Menéndez.

In this new phase, the group Fundamental Rights has decided to give priority to the international and European obligations of States when they use deprivation of liberty for the purpose of controlling the entry of aliens into their territories or executing expulsion orders. The group is going to update the project of the ELI "Detention of Asylum Seekers and Irregular Migrants and the Rule of Law" conducted in 2017 in light of the recent case law of the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the EU in this subject. This project falls under the ELI's priority line concerning the Rule of Law.