Brussels, 16/04/2009 (Agence Europe) - To honour the life and work of Micheline Galabert-Augé, the organisation's founder, first president and honorary president, the Association des Femmes de l'Europe Méridionale (AFEM) is organising a European competition for the award of a prize for scientific excellence. AFEM, which is based in Paris, brings together persons, and non-profit-making associations and platforms from the southern European Union countries (France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece). The prize is to reward the authors of the finest pieces of research in (French-speaking) law, political science and social science in the area of the protection of fundamental rights on a Europe-wide scale, including gender equality. The prize will reward a doctoral thesis or a monograph, drafted in or translated into French, that is of particular importance to research in this area. AFEM proposes to offer financial support of up to €3000 for the publication of the work by Editions Bruylant (Brussels). The prize will be awarded every two years, under the aegis of a committee of patrons and a scientific committee, made up of eminent figures from academia, the public institutions and European civil society, under the chairmanship of Jean Paul Costa, President of the European Court of Human Rights, and Jacqueline Dutheil de la Rochère, outgoing President of the Université Paris II (Panthéon-Assas), Director of the Centre for European Law at Paris II and member of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency Scientific Committee. The first competition, the prize for which will be awarded in 2010 will be opened on 30 April 2009 and closed on 31 December 2009. Eligible for inclusion will be theses defended and monographs completed between 1 January 2008 and 31 December 2009. The award ceremony will take place in Paris in April 2010 at a European conference on “Social Rights and Gender Equality in the European Union: the current state of the treaties, legislation and case law” organised by the AFEM with the Centre for European Law of Paris II. The official rules and call for applications for the 2010 competition are available at http://www.afem-europa.org (O.L./transl.rt)