It is an honour to be addressing these words to you as the newly elected president of PEOPIL.
With energy still flowing from the fantastic annual conference we held in Malaga on the 14th to the 16th of October this year, I am grateful for the enormous privilege I have been granted to serve this great organisation.
As you are aware, and as we have had the opportunity to discuss on numerous occasions, the past months have been filled with challenges for PEOPIL. Challenges that we have similarly faced in our professional and personal lives. I can only, therefore, insist on how grateful I am for the work that our Past President, John Beer, and Executive Board have done to keep our organisation at full speed in such difficult times. Their efforts and commitment will certainly facilitate the tasks before me.

On 14 September 2021 our member Marco Bona represented PEOPIL (the Pan-European Organisation of Personal Injury Lawyers) as a speaker at the event “From Ambition to Action. A High Level Conference on AI”, organised by the European Commission and the Slovenian Presidency of the European Council (see (https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/high-level-conference-weigh-eu-and-international-work-artificial-intelligence).

PEOPIL Executive Board member Liam Moloney (www.moloneysolicitors.ie) and Altom Maglio, the Managing Partner of the leading Vaccine injury Lawyers firm in the USA, Maglio Christopher & Toale (https://www.mctlaw.com ), will address our Annual Pan European Organisation for Personal Injuries Lawyers (www.peopil.com) Conference in Malaga in October 2021 about serious vaccine adverse side effects and how patient’s rights to seek compensation for such serious side effects are dealt with in the differing legal systems of the USA and Ireland.

Persistent post-COVID syndrome, also referred to as “long COVID”, is an illness which involves persistent, physical, medical injury following primary acquisition of COVID-19. At less than two years into the COVID-19 pandemic many long-term effects of SARS-COV-2 infection remain unclear. However, medical journals have confirmed that new evidence is emerging rapidly about symptom profiles and the rehabilitation needs of COVID-19 survivors in the initial months of their recovery.

Jean-Pierre Bellecave and Carlos Villacorta, as Managing Partners of the Spanish and French Law firm BCV Lex (www.bcvlex.com) are representing a number of US Citizens who were crew members of US carriers who were injured by fumes during domestic flights within the US on board Airbus aircrafts. Airbus is being sued because of the defective design and manufacture of the aeroplanes cabin pressure systems.

Thankfully many European Vaccination programmes continue at pace and we are all looking forward to the day when restrictions are fully lifted and International travel has resumed.

Liam Moloney PEOPIL Covid Litigation Group Co-Chair said today “however, while vaccines are safe and will allow us to resume normal life there can be very rare adverse reactions to them. This is why many countries have established Vaccine injury compensation schemes. These are generally no-fault schemes to compensate individuals who suffer very rare vaccine related injuries. PEOPIL urges all European Countries to establish fair and effective no fault vaccine compensation schemes “.