This book is the fruit of an international symposium that we organised at the German-Italian Centre for the European Dialogue, Villa Vigoni, in the summer of 2021. The aim of the conference was to gather experts from many diff erent fields of private law to obtain a broader view of the interaction between the European Convention on Human Rights and national private law. The volume contains the papers presented at the symposium, which have been updated to cover more recent legal developments and reflect the insights from our discussions at Villa Vigoni.

Originally, the conference was scheduled for May 2020. However, in the spring of that year, COVID-19 started to spread across Europe. The Italian region of Lombardy, where Villa Vigoni is located, was particularly affected by the pandemic. Suddenly, German universities would not permit their staff to take business trips abroad, many countries, including Italy, closed their borders, and the Centre for the European Dialogue was temporarily shut down and fell silent. For us, who had been used to travelling freely from country to country as modern day clerici vagantes, those events went beyond our imagination. They were a powerful reminder that open national frontiers are nothing we can take for granted, not even in Europe, and need to be defended, not just against viruses and other diseases, but likewise against all kinds of political threats.

Eventually, the conference was postponed to the end of August 2021. For most participants, the symposium at Villa Vigoni was the first in-person event aft er almost one and a half years of online meetings. This, together with the magnificent location of the Villa overlooking Lake Como, undoubtedly contributed to the pleasant and inspiring atmosphere of our gathering.

We are grateful to many institutions and persons who have supported our research project and made the publication of this book possible: the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for providing the funding for the conference; the German-Italian Centre for the European Dialogue, Villa Vigoni, and its staff for hosting the event, with special thanks to Julian Steff enelli, Luca Giovannelli, Vivien Kiliani, Anna-Katharina Klus, Linda Rossmann, Caroline Schmitt-Mücke, Benedict Walter, Ben Wennrich and Madlen Wolter for various kinds of assistance during different stages of the project.