The European Young Bar Association (EYBA) has elected a new president at its annual general meeting, held this year in Amsterdam. 

Chiara Palombi, who specialises in employment law at EY Studio Legale in Rome, was elected president, having been appointed vice president last year. She succeeds Shannon Gawley, an associate at Belfast firm Carson McDowell.

Portuguese lawyer Roberto Luz Vieira has also been appointed vice president, alongside dual-qualified Franco-Dutch lawyer Mathijs van Riet’s election as secretary.

They will serve alongside Romanian lawyer Bianca Lucretia Tomescu, who was re-elected as treasurer, and Italian lawyer Federico Camurati, Turkish in-house lawyer Fatih Özdemir and Azerbaijan’s Yunis Nasibov, all elected as executive officers.

Palombi said she was “honoured to have been elected as EYBA president for the upcoming year”. She added she was “looking forward to working with the rest of the newly elected board”, calling them “a fantastic team”.

Gawley, who becomes the immediate past president, enjoyed a successful year in which the EYBA, representing Europe’s young lawyers’ associations, held meetings in London, Rome and Amsterdam and developed its internal and external connections.

That included attendance at the annual International Lawyers’ Forum, hosted in Berlin by the German Federal Bar, at which members endorsed the recently ratified European Convention for the Protection of the Profession of Lawyer.

The EYBA also forged stronger links with the Federation of European Bars, including at that body’s annual conference, where Gawley spoke about career development and the key challenges facing the next generation of legal professionals across Europe, as well as the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe, which lobbies for European law societies in Brussels.

It also stood alongside peers expressing solidarity with colleagues in Istanbul (the Istanbul Bar Association) and the US (the American Bar Association and its Young Lawyers Division), as well as in other jurisdictions where, it said, “the independence of the legal profession is increasingly under pressure”.

Gawley said it had been “an absolute pleasure leading this association over the past year with an extraordinary team behind me. I’m thankful to my outgoing committee members for their support, enthusiasm and dedication during my term”. She added that she had no doubt Palombi would “lead the EYBA with the strength and vision it deserves”.

The EYBA’s next meeting will break with tradition, as its September gathering moves to Belfast following a decision by London’s young lawyers’ groups to pause hosting the International Weekend, which has traditionally been held alongside the Opening of the Legal Year.

The decision arose after discussion between the EYBA and host bodies, including the Junior Lawyers Division and the Young Barristers Committee, to allow an autumn event to be hosted by other EYBA member organisations, so delegates had an opportunity to visit different cities.

The Northern Irish Young Solicitors Association has hosted several previous EYBA events and won the right to host the 2025 autumn conference.

Rebekah Sutcliffe, chair of the Junior Lawyers Division, said it was sad to see the end of International Weekend. She added: “[International Weekend] has been a treasured tradition here in London for many years and has offered numerous wonderful opportunities to showcase our city, legal profession and lawyers internationally. We are grateful to all those who have organised or attended International Weekend over the years; your dedication has made it the success it has been for so long.

“We wish the new EYBA Autumn Conference every success and hope we can host EYBA and our international colleagues in London again.”