On the 10th December 2019 Professor Mary Footer from the University of Nottingham delivered the 2019 Annual Lecture of Birmingham's Institute of European Law.

Her lecture with the title "The Retreat from Multilateralism and the Challenges of Global Economic Governance from an EU Perspective" painted a bleak picture of the short to medium term prospects of international trade and its regulation, of which the problems of the World Trade Organisation and Brexit are only the most prominent developments.

This was the last public lecture of Mary Footer as a full time professor of law, she retired at the end of 2019. Professor Footer had also cooperated as the Nottingham lead in an EU-funded Innovative Training Network led by IEL Director Professor Martin Trybus from Birmingham.