Dear colleague,
Fifty years after Directive 75/442/EEC, the legal edifice has grown colossal and waste volumes have not fallen. We call this the regulatory paradox: continuous regulation, without resolution. It is the thread of our conference at the Maison des Sciences de Gestion, Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas, on 8-9 October 2026 (venue).
Opening keynotes by Nicolas de Sadeleer (Saint-Louis Bruxelles) will set out the legal architecture, being answered by Alison Stowell (Lancaster) and Hervé Corvellec (Lund) on the social deconstruction of law and waste. Louis Meuleman, Chair of the Scientific Committee of the European Environment Agency, closes the two days with a call to the science-policy dialogue. In between, two roundtables place stakeholders with opposed interests face to face, on the making of European waste law and on its implementation, each chaired by a social scientist. Four sessions in three parallel tracks will bring together 36 papers from thirteen countries and three continents. An exhibition of photographs by Bénédicte Florin and Pascal Garret and drawings by Alizée de Pin and Mercedes Dekeyser runs alongside. The gala dinner is held aboard a barge on the Seine, where conversation flows more freely than under strip lights.
The summer being ill-suited to administrative business, we have extended the early rate by one week, through 7 September inclusive (€90 doctoral students, €190 faculty, €290 practitioners). To benefit from it, please register on the platform and, at the very end of the process, at the payment stage, enter the code EARLYBIRD50, until 7 September. Registration then closes definitively on 25 September, a deadline set by our caterer. If paying by card is difficult, or if you would like to come but cannot secure institutional funding, do write to us. We may well find a solution.
Please feel free to circulate this information among your network.
On behalf of the organising committee,
Alexandre CAMINO