News

The team of the NWO Vici project ‘Affordable Access to Justice’ at Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University (Rotterdam), is organising the conference ‘Sustaining Access to Justice in Europe: New Avenues for Costs and Funding’ on 19 and 20 October 2023 at the Erasmus Paviljoen at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Access to civil justice is of paramount importance for enforcing citizens’ rights. At the heart of access to civil justice lies litigation funding and cost management. Yet, over the past decades, access to justice has been increasingly put under pressure due to retrenching governments, high costs of procedure, and the inefficiency of courts and justice systems. Within this context, the funding of litigation in Europe seems to be shifting from public to private sources. Private actors and innovative business models emerged to provide new solutions to the old problem of financial barriers of access to justice.

With the participation of policymakers, practitioners, academics, and civil society representatives from all over Europe and beyond, the conference seeks to delve deeper into the financial implications of access to justice and the different ways to achieve sustainable civil justice systems in Europe.

The topics addressed in this international academic conference will include the different methods of financing dispute resolution, particularly in the context of group litigation (third-party funding, crowdfunding, blockchain technologies), public interest litigation, developments in ADR/ODR, the new business models of legal professionals as well as law and economics aspects on litigation funding. The conference is supported by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

Find the link to registration here.

Please find the preliminary conference programme below.

Call for papers Vici Conference Sustainable justice 2023.pdf

Provisional Programme.pdf

The team of the Vici project Affordable Access to Justice at Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University (Rotterdam), is organising a Conference on Sustaining Access to Justice in Europe: Developments in Costs and Funding on 19 and 20 October 2023 at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

The conference will spotlight papers, discussions, research presentations and a keynote on various aspects relating to the establishment of sustainable access to justice in Europe, including litigation costs and funding, third-party funding and litigation crowdfunding, Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), public interest litigation, collective redress, and entrepreneurial lawyering.

See a call for abstracts here.

Confirmed keynote speakers are Rachael Mulheron (Queen Mary University London) and Andreas Stein (European Commission, DG Just, head of unit). More details on the program and registration will follow soon!

On 7 December 2022 (10-13 hrs) the team of the Vici project ‘Affordable Access to Justice’ at Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University (Rotterdam), organised a fruitful online research seminar ‘Third Party Funding: Trends, Developments and the Future.’

The seminar included two presentations on two of the articles in the recently published special issue of Erasmus Law Review, edited by Vici members Professor Xandra Kramer (Erasmus School of Law) and Associate Professor Masood Ahmed (University of Leicester, UK) on Global Developments and Challenges in Costs and Funding of Civil Justice. Dr David Capper (Queen’s University, Belfast) and Professor Michale Legg (UNSW, Sydney) presented their respective papers on third party funding in Australia and Ireland.

This seminar kicked off with the launch of the new book Frontiers in Civil Justice - Privatisation, Monetisation and Digitisation (Elgar 2022); an edited collection of essays from the ERC project Building EU Civil Justice. The editors, Xandra Kramer, Jos Hoevenaars, Betül Kas and Erlis Themeli introduced the book and posed questions on the questions on the main themes of the book to Prof. Stefaan Voet (Leuven University).

Carlota Ucín has developed a training site for disseminating her work on public interest litigation, human rights and argumentative theory. The purpose of this project is to be able to transfer this knowledge and help practitioners and judges to better legitimate their actions by supporting their claims and decisions from a human rights perspective.

Therefore, the site has two main sections: a blog and a training platform where courses online will be delivered. The first online activity was the presentation of her book (Juicio a la desigualdad. La defensa de los derechos sociales a través del proceso. Inequality on trial. The defence of social rights through the process, Marcial Pons, Madrid, 2021).

Although the site is for now only available in Spanish it may also be translated into English in the near future.

For visiting the site or getting to know more about it, you can follow this link.

We are happy and proud that our book Frontiers in Civil Justice: Privatisation, Monetisation and Digitisation (eds. Xandra Kramer, Jos Hoevenaars, Betül Kas and Erlis Themeli) has been published by Elgar. It is a volume evolving from the ERC project Building EU Civil Justice, and contains excellent chapters by many colleagues we have worked with in the past years.

The book studies three interrelated frontiers in civil justice from a European and national perspectives, combining theory with policy and insights from practice: the interplay between private and public justice, the digitization of justice, and litigation funding. These current topics are viewed against the backdrop of the requirements of effective access to justice and the overall goal of establishing a sustainable civil justice system in Europe.

The combined works take on a pan-European perspective and zoom in on several European jurisdictions, thereby providing a holistic exploration of current civil justice debates and frontiers. The book includes chapters dedicated to the interaction between public and private justice, the digitisation of both private dispute resolution and court litigation, including the rapid development and use of advanced forms of Artificial Intelligence, and the funding of justice, especially collective actions and settlements by means of private funding and common funds.

The book can be ordered here. The first Introductory chapter is open access available on the EE website.

Our Vici member Adriani Dori will participate in a new project under the auspices of the European Law Institute (ELI) on “Third Party Funding of Litigation” (TPLF). The two-year-long project has been recently approved by the ELI Council. It will be conducted by three reporters (Professor Susanne Augenhofer, Ms Justice Dame Sara Cockerill, and Professor Henrik Rothe) with the support of an International Advisory Committee. The project’s main output will be the development of a set of principles (potentially supplemented by checklists) to identify issues to be considered when entering into a TPLF agreement. Adriani will participate as a project member (together with Mr Joseph Rich). The final outcome is expected in September 2024. More information, as well as regular updates, can be found on the ELI webpage.

We are happy to announce the publication of the Erasmus Law Review Special Issue on Global Developments and Challenges in Costs and Funding of Civil Justice (also reported here). This Special Issue contains three contributions from our team members alongside an editorial note by Masood Ahmed and Xandra Kramer.

Firstly, Adriani Dori inquired whether the fact-finding process that supports the preparation of the EU Justice Scoreboard, as well as the data this document displays, conveys reliable and comparable information. Adrian Cordina critically examines, including from a law-and-economics perspective, the main sources of concern leading to the skepticism shown towards TPF in Europe and how the regulatory frameworks of England and Wales, the Netherlands, and Germany in Europe, and at the European Union level, the Representative Actions Directive address such concerns. Finally, in view of the UKSC’s finding of non-infringement of Article 6 ECHR in Coventry v. Lawrence [2015] 50, Eduardo Silva de Freitas argued that a more holistic view of the procedural guarantees provided for by Article 6 ECHR is called for to properly assess its infringement, considering mainly the principle of equality of arms.

On 10 and 11 July, Jos Hoevenaars participated as a speaker at the meeting of the RCSL Working Group of the Comparative Study of the Legal Professions (WGLP) which was held from 10 till 12 July in Coimbra, Portugal. The working group brought together eminent researchers working on various aspects surrounding professional ethics of both judges and lawyers. Unable to travel to Portugal Jos joined the panel on legal ethics remotely to present his research on the impact of the (increasing) possibility for parties to litigate without the guidance of a legal aid provider on Dutch civil procedure in practice. Through interviews with Dutch subdistrict judges he analyses the extent to which self-representation influences the role of the judge. The research shows how judges seek a balance between their role as neutral arbitrator in a dispute and a more active role necessitated by parties not being represented by a legal aid provider. In doing so, they navigate between process and content, and must constantly balance the trade-off between acting more actively to gather sufficient information for a substantive handling and assessment of the case, on the one hand, and safeguarding the limits of party autonomy and their own (perceived) neutrality, on the other.

Xandra Kramer gave a keynote at a young scholars conference on fundamental rights in private international law in Leuven on 16 June 2022. The conference focused developments in The Netherlands, Belgium and South Africa. Her lecture discussed the development of private international law as value neutral system towards a determinant of values and strategic instrument in the EU context. She also explored the rise of strategic litigation in climate cases and consumer cases as well as the proposed anti-SLAPPs to both enforce and secure rights, and how private international law rules (should) foster these.

After three years the annual Public Private Justice course and conference in Dubrovnik resumed in live format (23-27 May 2022). The overriding theme was: The End of Civil Procedure? Challenges of Automatization, Specialization and Privatization. Xandra Kramer gave a presentation entitled ‘Commercializing Litigation: from court specialization to commodification – the case of international business courts’. She discussed how the establishment of international commercial courts - in Europe in part as a response to Brexit - have contributed to commodification of litigation, which has both positive and negative aspects. Adriani Dori prestented on ‘The Role of the EU in the Transformations of EU National Civil Justice Systems’, critically discussing -based on collected empirical data - how the EU Justice scoreboard assesses the civil justice systems, and which recommendations resulted from this assessment.

In April 2022, the II International Conference of Young Researchers (Jornada Internacional Jóvenes investigadores – GINVESTIGA, 26-28 April) took place at the University of Girona. More than 40 researchers discussed “Efficiency, Modernization and Acceleration of the Judicial Process”. Adriani Dori gave a presentation on “Data on the Books and Law in Action”, assessing the actual impact of EU soft-law instruments on national justice systems. Her presentation focused on how quantitative and qualitative statistical and empirical judicial data contribute to determining EU Justice policy, how they transform into top-down policy guidelines for national justice systems, and how the Member States respond to such policy guidelines.

Carlota Ucín was invited as a speaker at the International Congress on Consumers’ judicial protection (Congreso Internacional “La tutela de consumidores y usuarios. El marco europeo, su aplicación en el ordenamiento español y los sistemas de actuación y protección en Andalucía”) which took place in Sevilla the 15 and 16 of March 2022. She there presented the forms of Public Interest Litigation and their role in providing access to justice to consumers. In particular, she focused on the Argentinean experience in structural reform litigation.

On the 17th of December, 2021, Adrian Cordina participated as a speaker at the 17th annual conference of the Italian Society of Law and Economics (SIDE) which was held from December 15 to 17 at the University of Trento. He presented his paper titled ‘Is it all that Fishy? A Critical Review of the Concerns surrounding Third Party Litigation Funding’. The theme of the session was ‘Litigation process and legal profession’ and was moderated by Evangelia Nissioti (University of Hamburg).

Carlota Ucín gave a presentation on: “The forms of Public Interest litigation” in the Law Conference held on November 17 and organized by the San Isidro Bar Association, under the slogan “The new process.” She presented the experience of public interest litigation in the Argentinean practice and the role of collective procedures in this field.

Carlota Ucín participated in the event organized by Serra Dominguez Foundation (Spain) where she developed some of the ideas of her book (Juicio a la desigualdad, Marcial Pons, 2021). In particular, she focused on the proportionality test within the Public Interest Litigation cases showing how the role of judges in these cases could be legitimated in an argumentative way. The event took place in Valencia the 11 and 12 November 2021.

Carlota Ucín was invited to present some of the ideas of her book (Juicio a la desigualdad, Marcial Pons, 2021) at Salamanca School of Law (Spain).The topic of the meeting was related to the debate on the possible public policies to eradicate any forms of inequality of women in political, economic and social participation. She then spoke about the importance of Public Interest Litigation to enforce access to justice and help to remove these inequalities.

Carlota Ucín has recently published this book, that is part of her PhD thesis. As she refers, Human Rights represent —today more than ever— a shared morality that guides us towards subsistence as cohesive communities. From this perspective, Public Interest Litigation becomes fundamental as a way of achieving the enforcement of these rights and to some extent, social change. This practice took shape in most of the countries of the so-called Global South after the latest constitutional reforms. It then emerged there as a body of lawsuits oriented by the Public Interest and tending to give effect to the social rights promised in the Constitutions but violated in practice. However, the phenomenon is not exclusive to these countries, and we are beginning to see signs of this in the so-called climate change crisis litigation.

The first debates in the legal theory field were linked to the possibility of ensuring the judicial enforceability of these rights and to the role of the courts in this new scenario. The dialectic was oriented, centrally, towards the demonstration of the analogies that exist between civil and political rights, on the one hand, and social rights on the other. In practice, the lack of specific regulations replicated —at its turn— the existence of social inequalities. First because of the limited access to justice and then because of the overuse of the procedural instruments specific to individual rights.

JUICIO A LA DESIGUALDAD suggests an alternative view, which at the same time serves as a guide for the new forms of litigation emerging. For this, the author analyses the theoretical and institutional difficulties derived from social rights and suggests the elaboration of categories according to their speciality. She develops her argument in two parts, the first specifies the reasons why social rights should not be totally equated with civil and political rights, showing, instead, the convenience of a specific theoretical and procedural treatment. The second part is based on the experience of Public Interest Litigation and sets out the guidelines that will serve for the development of a collective procedural paradigm —with participatory and deliberative bases— that allows ensuring the effective protection of these rights.

Xandra Kramer was elected to the European Law Institute Council by the Membership at the 2021 Annual conference. Her four-year term (which may be renewed once) started on 8 September 2021. Xandra was invited to become a member of the Association that preceded the formal establishment of the ELI and has been an active member of the ELI since 2012. She was a involved in the ELI-Unidroit Model European Rules of Civil Procedure that were adopted in 2020 from the inception of the project in 2013, as a co-reporter of the overarching Structure group and reporter of the Provisional measures working group (see also our blogpost on conflictoflaws.net). In 2020, she also wrote the response to the public consultation on the European Enforcement Order Regulation on the
request of ELI, and she serves as an observer for the ELI at the Best Practices for Effective Enforcement Project of Unidroit.

Xandra Kramer was elected as a Member of the Institut de Droit International, IDI (Institute of International Law) at the bi-annual meeting in August 2021 (see also here). The IDI was founded in 1873 as an academic association that aims to improve the advancement of international law and peace. In 1904, the Insititute received the Nobel Peace Prize for improving international arbitration as a way of peaceful settlement of conflicts. The IDI has a counselling role in the United Nations Economic and Social Council. The IDI has 130 members, all prominent academics and scholars from the field of international private law or public law from across the world. Xandra has been selected based on her expertise in the area of private international law.

At the Annual meeting of the Law and Society Association (LSA) Jos Hoevenaars presented a paper, co-written with Betül Kas and Erlis Themeli on the impact of trends of digitalisation, increasing self-representation and privatisation of justice on the function of civil courts and the day-to-day practise of civil judges. The panel, chaired by prof. Tomohiko Maeda, brought together scholars from Japan, Chili and the Netherlands and focused on topics such as the attitudes towards the use of AI in courts AI (Shozo Ota), the relationship between income and access to justice (Myrte Hoekstra), innovative neuro-legal research into the ‘legal mind’ (Takeshi Asamizuya) and the Chilean judiciary’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic (Macarena Vargas).

Xandra Kramer taught a course on Global and European Civil Procedure at the HSE University in Moscow in collaboration with Georgia Antonopoulou. It adressed developments in civil procedure in Europe and at the global level and discussed rules on private international law, in particular international jurisdiction, choice of court and recognition and enforcement. One lecture dedicated to International Commercial Courts was taught by Georgia.

Carlota Ucín was invited to participate in a webinar organized by the Research group Fundamentos do Processo Civil Contemporâneo (FPCC) coordinated by Professor Dr Hermes Zaneti Jr. at the Federal University of Espirito Santo, Brazil (UFES). In her presentation, she outlined the main features of Public Interest Litigation and how it may have a great impact on promoting access to justice of fundamental rights. In particular, she highlighted that the shift from public to private funding of civil litigation could be benefited from the Public Interest approach, which is more concentrated in raising certain claims that could imply lower cost with greater benefits. This can be explained in part because these claims may provoke the change of a bureaucratic practice or they could protect some public goods. The exchange was very enriching for both sides since Brazil has great experience in this kind of litigation and must face great dilemmas related to costs and access to justice.

In 2019 Xandra Kramer was elected to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). As of April 2021 she also chairs the law scholars section which is part of the Behavioural Sciences, Social Sciences and Law Domain, in which she also serves as a committee member. The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences was founded in 1808 as an advisory body to the Dutch Government and still fulfils this role of advising on subjects of science and scholarship.

On 5 February 2021, Xandra Kramer participated in the online seminar ‘The Netherlands: a forum conveniens for collective redress?’, jointly organized by Maastricht University, Tilburg University, the Univerisity of Amsterdam, in collaboration with the Open University. The seminar was dedicated to the interantionational attractiveness of the Dutch courts and Dutch remedies, the interaction between EU law and Dutch collective actions and the market for mass litigation. Together with Alexander Layton, QC, she discussed in how far the position of The Netherlands is reinforced in a fragmented international legal landscape, also resulting from Brexit.

The European Order for Payment Regulation became applicable in 2005 and aims to smoothen cross-border enforcement of debts. After the partial abolition of exequatur in the enforcement rules on parental responsibility in the Brussels II-bis Regulation, it was the first broad instrument to abolish intermediate proceedings for enforcement in civil and commercial matters as far is it concerns an uncontested claim. For that purpose it introduces a number of minimum norms of civil procedure, in particular on the service of documents and information. This instrument was followed by a number of other instruments, including the European order for payment procedure, the Small Claims procedure and the Account preservation order, that advanced the harmonisation of civil procedure and the abolition of exequatur. With the Brussels I-bis Regulation becoming applicable in 2015, the abolition of exequatur with the aim to simplify cross-border enforcement reached its momentum.

Fifteen years after the European Enforcement Order Regulation became applicable it was high time that the Regulation be evaluated. Xandra Kramer acted as national reporter for the Netherlands. In addition, she wrote a response to the public consultation on the request of the European Law Institute (here) and participated to an opinion of the EAPIL (here).

Apart from evaluating the overall functioning in the Member States, the question is also whether it is still a useful instrument considering the enactment of new instruments and the abolition of exequatur under Brussels I-bis. While it is still used in the Netherlands and part of the other Member States, the undesired multiplicity and incoherence of instruments in the area of European civil procedure coupled with the inherent complexity of the present Regulation cast doubt. While it has served its purpose in enhancing access to justice its value in the present European civil justice system is very limited.

On 8 January 2021 we hosted a mini webinar on International Commercial Courts and Jurisdiction, as part of our ERC Building EU Civil Justice project.

In recent years international commercial courts have been established in a significantnumber of countries in Europe and across the world. An important aspect in attracting international commercial cases is how international jurisdiction rules are framed. ERC project member Georgia Antonopoulou is writing her PhD research on international commercial courts and presented on how a wide casting of the jurisdictional net influences the caseload of international commercial courts. Discussant was Caroline Lasthaus, PhD candidate at Bucerius Law School, Hamburg, who also conducts research on international commercial courts.

The presentations were very interesting and appreciated by the around 45 participants in the webinar and led to fruitful discussions.

The launch of the Elgar Companion to the Hague Conference on Private International Law took place on 15 December 2020. The book, edited by Thomas John, Rishi Gulati and Ben Köhler, was launched by Christophe Bernasconi, Secretary General of the HCCH, and was followed by a conversation and Q&A on a key
theme that emerged in the Companion: the importance of private international law to providing access to justice. Xandra Kramer kicked off by stressing the importance of the various instruments of the Hague Conference for increasing access to justice at the global level and the crucial rule digitisation plays in enhancing judicial cooperation. Her talk was followed by a practical perspective by Justin Gleeson SC (Barrister and Arbitrator, Banco Chambers, Sydney). The conversation was kindly led by Matthew Neuhaus, Australian ambassor to the Netherlands.

At an online conference on European civil procedure organized by the European Law Academy in Trier on 26 October 2020, Xandra Kramer presented on on ‘European civil procedure 4.0? The European Account Preservation Order & Payment Order at the Court of Justice’. She showed that considering the case law and legal practice these European procedures still operate in the shadow of the Brussels I-bis Regulation and national civil procedure. Discussing the first case of the European Court of Justice on the European Account Preservation Order and case law on the European Payment Order it is clear that the Court maneouvers it’s way into the national intricasies when implementing the European regulations on civil procedure.

Xandra Kramer was interviewed by Geert Maarse at Talkshow Studio Erasmus on 20 October 2020. She was asked to participate on the ocassion of obtaining a Vici grant from the Dutch Research Council. The interview was about the costs litigation and the importance of keeping access to justice affordable. The interview was held in Dutch and is available here.

On 25 September 2020, Xandra Kramer presented on the ELI-Unidroit Model European Rules of Civil Procedure: perspectives for national and European legislators at the closing workshop on the occasion of the UNIDROIT Governing Council meeting.
While the Rules cannot be copied into a national or supranational legal order one-on-one as they are not created as an all encompassing code, they have a number of interesting features that can serve as a model for national and European legislators.

The ELI-Unidroit Model European Rules of Civil Procedure were adopted by the European Law Institute and Unidroit in 2020. Xandra Kramer was involved in this large scale project from the inception at an exploratory workshop in Vienna in October 2013. She was a member and reporter of the working group on provisional and protective measures, and together with Loic Cadiet (Paris 1, Sorbonne) acted as co-reporter of the overarching Structure group, charged with with coordinating the work of the different working groups, filling the gaps, and securing a coherent set of model rules to be used by European and national legislators in particular. See also our blogpost on the adoption of these Model Rules on conflictoflaws.net.

Together with Andrea Evers (professor of Health Psychology, Leiden University, Delft and Erasmus University), Xandra Kramer moderated a webinar on research practices during and after Covid-19 in the social sciences and humanities. The webinar took place on 10 September and was organised by the Dutch Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences, of which Xandra is a member.

Panellists discussed the influence of Covid-19 on their research and research practices in general. It led to vivid and very interesting dicussions. While research practices and in particular international collaborations and field research is challenged, the pandemic and the opening up of more intensive online collaborations also creates opportunities. In particular for younger researchers and research communities in countries that are less versed in online communication, however, the pandemic has created uncertainties that need attention. The expectation is that the pandemic will continue to be topic of research in many areas of social sciences and will have a long-lasting effect on research practices.

These effects are also experienced by our research team. While it gave some food for thought (see also our blogposts on access to justice in times of corona and on collective redress and this webinar), it also hampers field research, research stays abroad, daily interaction between our team members as well as the participation in and organisation of live events that are more than the content of presentations only.

The recordings of the webinar (mostly English spoken, but parts in Dutch) are available here.

Xandra Kramer participated as a commentator in a digital workshop organized by the Swedish Network for European Legal studies and Uppsala University on 20 August 2020. Xandra discussed a paper presented by Eva Storskrubb on the European Acccount Preservation Order.

The paper focused on the question whether the Regulation needs improvement. Xandra pointed to a number of issues that makes the implementation of this Regulation in the diverse legal systems of attachment and enforcement in the Member States particularly difficult. These include the intertwinement with substantive law, debt and insolvency law and the involvement of third parties. Recent case law and empirical research in a number of Member States shows that so far this Regulation is not used often in practice. It seems too early to draw firm conclusions as to whether the Regulation needs amendment or whether further harmonisation is required.

On 17 July 2020, Xandra Kramer participated, on invitation byPaula Sarno, in an Instagram Live event organized as part of the Projeto mulheres no processo by the the Brazilian Institute of Procedural Law (IBDP). Her talk evolved around international judicial cooperation and business litigation, in particular the trend of establishing international business courts and the importance of the new The Hague Judgment Convention for international dispute resolution. Her counterpart was Thiago Borges and the presentation took the form of a lively conversation, only hampered somewhat by the technique.

Our conference Frontiers in Civil Justice will be held on 16-17 November 2020. We will address four key issues in civil justice requiring a deeper and renewed reflection in light of their contribution of facilitating access to justice. These are the shaping of the interaction between formal and informal justice, the digitalization of consumer dispute resolution (ODR), the collectivizing and monetizing of civil litigation and efforts of bringing justice closer to citizens. The conference will bring together academics, policymakers, practitioners and representatives of civil society to critically reflect on the opportunities and possible drawbacks ensuing from these paramount developments. The outline of the conference, including confirmed keynote speakers, is avaible here. Further details will be made available soon. Call for Papers! For the last part of the conference we welcome abstracts on the topic ‘Innovations in Civil Justice - Bringing Justice Closer to Citizens’. Please send in your abstract of max. 500 words before 31 July. Further details can be found here. We will have great speakers and look forward to exciting debates. We hope to see you in Rotterdam or online in case meeting in real is not possible due to the Covid-19 crisis.

Jos Hoevenaars and Xandra Kramer published a blogpost on conflictoflaws.net on mass litigation in times of corona and developments in the Netherlands. It discusses the rise of litigation and in particular mass litigation following from the corona crisis. Around the world, cases are being filed relating to health and economic effects and labour conditions. The new Dutch act that became applicable on the 1st of January 2020, the Collective Redress of Mass Damages Act (WAMCA), may be a useful tool to address the litigation following the corona crisis.

Digital court room Rotterdam (rechtspraak.nl)

While our focus is on keeping ourselves and others healthy and safe and we share the great concerns and grief caused by the corona virus, our team tries to keep the spirit up and is working at a reduced pace from home. Our PhD researcher Georgia had to return earlier from her research stay in Singapore – but we are happy to have her back safe and sound – and many of our planned activities have been cancelled. Luckily, some meetings and events can still go through online and we hope that this virus that has been so devastating for many people can be controlled soon and we can begin to pick up our normal life routines and work activities in a world that has been shaken.

The disruption of society has naturally also affected our justice systems. In the Netherlands, the courts were closed on 17 March 2020, and only process designated urgent cases (including child protection cases, health and security related cases, insolvency cases, and certain criminal cases). A positive side effect is the rapid uptake of digitisation of justice. In the Netherlands, on 3 April 2020 a legislative proposal was put forward to enable more electronic communication and video calling to secure that the judiciary can keep functioning. We report more in detail on this in our blogpost on Conflictoflaws.net.

Stay safe and healthy!

Jos Hoevenaars was interviewed for the Dutch magazine for the legal profession ‘Het Advocatenblad’ about his insight into the experiences of lawyers who find themselves litigating before the European Court of Justice after their case is referred though a reference for a preliminary ruling. In the interview (freely translated: ‘Court of Justice? Experience Needed!’) he discusses his empirical research among Dutch lawyers and paints a picture of generally overwhelmed professionals scrambling for assistance among EU law scholars, while making the best of their opportunity to plead before the ECJ, often in opposition to a group of well-trained EU law experts appearing on behalf of intervening Member States. His work on the reference procedure highlight the inequality in representation before the ECJ and its potential negative impact on the Court’s caselaw and its national consequences.

In February, we hosted Anna Wysocka-Bar as a guest researcher at our team and Erasmus School of Law. Anna is a lecturer at Jagiellonian University (Poland) and an academic coordinator of a Jean Monnet Module 2019-2022 on European private international law. She holds PhD degree (the thesis on party autonomy in international succession law was successfully defended at Jagiellonian University, Poland) and an LLM in law and technology (Ottawa University, Canada).

Anna reported: "I came to Rotterdam to kick-off my research on the interaction between EU private international law and unified transport law conventions. Within three weeks of my stay in the Netherlands, I profited greatly from the Sanders Law Library in Rotterdam and Peace Palace Library in the Hague, attended seminars and guest lectures, spotted best practices when observing how EU private international law is taught at Erasmus School of Law, and, last but not least, was given the opportunity to discuss my ideas with top experts from Erasmus University – the hub of international transport, trade and private international law in Europe. My stay in the Netherlands was possible thanks to the famous Dutch hospitality and a research grant from the Miniatura programme of the National Science Center (Poland)."

On Friday 21 February 2020, the team of the ERC project Building EU Civil Justice organised a seminar on European Cross-Border Procedures. Guests of this seminar were nine students from the Sigmund Freud University Vienna. The aim of this event was to create an international outlet where students would discuss topics related to the theme of the seminar and receive feedback from senior academics.

Before joining the Seminar, the students prepared a presentation which they presented and discussed at the Austrian Ministry of Justice, EU institutions in Brussels and the Hague Conference on Private International Law. The Erasmus School of Law was the last stage of this trip and the Building EU Civil Justice team gladly accepted to discuss with the students.

The Seminar was opened by Prof. Xandra Kramer, the leader of Building EU Civil Justice, and Florian Heindler, assistant professor at the Sigmund Freud University who was accompanying the students. After these warm greetings, Alina Ontanu gave a short lecture on Access to Justice via e-Handling of Cross-border Procedures. Next, Felix Gruber, Sarah Kremser, and Mariella Sturz presented respectively their research on the amendment of the EU Evidence Regulation in the light of IT, the amendment of the EU Service Regulation in the light of IT, and the impact of the Hague Service Convention on Austria. Priskila Pratita Penasthika form the ESL commented on their presentation and gave some feedback.

Emma van Gelder started the second half of the seminar with a lecture on online dispute resolution in Europe. Her lecture was followed by the presentations of Stella Galehr, Tessa Grosz, and Tanja Pfleger who respectively presented on the liability of states and private entities in relation to the use of IT in international legal cooperation, non-discriminatory access to IT-based judicial infrastructure, and questions of data protection in judicial cooperation under the Hague Adults Convention. For this panel, Betul Kas served as discussant and moderator. In the last panel of this seminar, Julius Merhaut, Simon Kirschner, and Andrea Szell presented while Erlis Themeli provided feedback. The presentations of these students focused on iSupport status quo and further perspectives, possibilities and risks of IT for a uniform commercial register, and the EIO - The implementation of the Directive 2014/41/EU (Int adm law).

In the end, those attending the seminar joined a small reception where they expressed their gratitude for the organisation and in particular for Erlis and Florian who coordinated it. Considering the positive experience, the Austrian guests wish to see similar events more often in the future. The Building EU Civil Justice team is more than happy to host and help organising similar events in the future.

On 21 February 2020, Dr. Florian Heindler (Sigmund Freud University, Vienna) our team - with special thanks to Erlis Themeli - organized a small scale a seminar on e-justice at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Nine students from Vienna accompanied Dr. Heindler to learn abouy and give presentation on e-justice. Our univeristy was the last one in a series of visits, including to the European Commission and the Hague Conference on Private International Law.

The students presented their research on a wide variety of interesting topics on judicial cooperation and the use of IT, including on the Service and Evidence Regulations and Conventions, liablity in relation to the use of IT international legal cooperation, non-discriminatory access to IT-based judicial infrastructure, and data protection. Some of our ERC members and other staff members of our law school gave a presentation or acted as commentator to the students' presentations.

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) has awarded Xandra Kramer a Vici grant of 1.5 million euros for the project 'Affordable access to justice: towards sustainable cost and funding mechanisms for civil litigation in Europe'. This grant will enable to further develop her research in the area of civil justice and to consolidate her research group in the coming five years. Vici is one of the largest scientific grants for individuals in the Netherlands and targets advanced researchers.

The project will assess new pathways to civil justice funding and cost schemes, with a view to developing a balanced financing system, thereby securing access to justice in Europe. We will analyse the development of (private) financing and cost mechanisms in several European jurisdictions and build on a framework for financing and cost rules that contributes to a sustainable European civil justice system.

The Vici grant builds on the present ERC Consolidator project Building EU Civil Justice. The new project is expected to kick off in September 2020. We will start recruiting postdoc and PhD researchers as well as a senior researcher soon.

See the press release by Erasmus School of Law.

On 6 February 2020, Xandra Kramer gave two presentations on developments in e-justice and e-evidence in Europe and globally at MacKenzie University in Campinas, Brazil. These presentations were part of a 'trilogy' on civil justice, focusing on the past, the present and the future. Prof. Remco van Rhee (Maastricht University) focused on historical aspects, while Prof. Alan Uzelac (University of Zagreb) addressed the use of artificial intelligence in civil justice.

These lectures were part of the celebration of the 150th anniversity of MacKenzie University in Campinas. Our stay in Campinas was kindly hosted by Prof. Edilson Vitorelli.

As part of a two weeks stay in Brazil, Xandra Kramer gave a presentation at a seminar on collective redress, organized by the Public Procecutors Office and ProcNet, in Rio de Janeiro on 31 January 2020. Our stay was kindly hosted by Prof. Antonio Cabral (UERF). The seminar assembled public prosecutors involved on collective action in Brazil, lawyers, academics and students. Her presentation focused on Collective redress and mass settlements in a Dutch, European and private international law perpective. Discussion evolved around the WCAM settlement mechanism and international jurisdiction, safeguards in collective actions and the new Dutch act on collective action for damages that came into force on 1 January of this year.

On 1 January 2020 Betül Kas joined our ERC team as a postdoc researcher on the subproject on privatisation of civil justice. She is the successor of Alexandre Biard, who as of December 2019 continued his career as a senior advisor at BEUC in Brussels, where he will be able to use his extensive research experience for the benefit of enforcing consumer rights in the EU. We are grateful for his invaluable contribution to our project, resulting in an impressive number of publications and conference presentations among others. We all greatly appreciated his many initiatives, his fieldwork, support of the other researchers, work spirit, and good sense of humour. We are happy to keep him in our team as an affiliated researcher and look forward to our futher collaboration.

We welcome Betül to our team as the successor of Alexandre for the postdoc project on privatisation. She has an impressive track record, having worked among others as a PhD researcher in the ERC Advanced project of Hans Micklitz at the European University Institute in Florence and as a postdoc researcher in the Vidi project led by Chantal Mak at the University of Amsterdam. Her German background will further strengthen our research on German law and practice. One of her research focuses will be the interaction between public and private justice. We are very happy to have Betül on our team and look forward to working with her in 2020 and onwards!

Two ERC Members – Erlis Themeli and Emma van Gelder – in cooperation with Anna van Duin (UvA) received the ACES research grant to organize an academic conference. The theme of this Conference focuses on the question if and how digital and intelligent technologies can contribute to enhancing access to justice for EU citizens and consumers. It aims at bringing together legal scholars and social scientists with an interest in (automated) decision-making processes and dispute resolution mechanisms in contemporary Europe. As such, it aims to spark an interdisciplinary debate within the research community at UvA and beyond on how technological developments can facilitate access to justice, a cornerstone of the rule of law. The organisers are preparing the programma and the conference is intended to take place in September 2020.

Erlis Themeli was invited as a guest lecturer at the Bar-Ilan University (Ramat Gan, Israel) from 16 to 20 December 2019. Erlis delivered lectures on digital technologies and law to a group of Israeli and international students. During this week, Erlis presented also at the Law, Artificial intelligence and Data Science Conference organised on 18-19 December 2019. The Conference served as an inauguration event for the BIU LawData LAB. This invitation was supported by an Erasmus+ grant of the European Union. Erlis’ presentation was well received with many participants suggesting ways to follow up on it. Erlis had also the possibility to establish a bridgehead with colleagues from the BIU LawData LAB, which will serve as a starting point for future collaborations.

On 11 December, Xandra Kramer and Emma van Gelder participated in the HCCH a|Bridged Edition 2019 held at the Peace Palace in the Hague. The conference evolved around innovation in cross-border litigation and civil procedure, focusing on the HCCH Service Convention in the era of electronic and information technology.

Emma presented within the Panel ‘The Prism: The Tech Battle for e-Service’. Her topic was distributed ledger technology (DLT). She first briefly explained what DLT is. Subsequently, she explained how DLT could support and improve the operation of the HCCH Service Convention, touching upon benefits as efficiency, transparency and the mitigation on the dependence of an intermediary. After setting out the benefits, she presented several challenges of DLT touching upon challenges as lack of an international legal framework and legal standards, scalability challenges and the digital divide.

Xandra chaired the Open Lab panel, involving an academic examination of the operation of the Service Convention in the world of tomorrow and a discussion with the audience. Xandra’s presentation focused on the achievements of the Service Convention, as one of the most successful Conventions. She highlighted problems encountered in the EU context extrapolated to the global level as well as the tension between the required efficiency to improve access to justice and the need for protecting other fundamental rights, including the right to be heard, privacy and security in the digital context. She addressed the question in how far the Convention would need amendment, considering the principle of functional equivalent, and the need for an overarching instrument on digital judicial cooperation.

On 28-29 November 2019, the Ius Commune Research School organised its annual congress. Emma van Gelder and Erlis Themeli presented at the workshop Technology for Civil Justice. Erlis presented on The virtual courtroom and users’ perception, which relates to his research on the use new technologies in courts rooms. Emma presented jointly with Bianca Kremer (University of St Gallen) on Consumer ODR and blockchain within the workshop Technology for Civil Justice, aimed to explore the impact of technology on civil justice from the perspective of acess to justice and procedural fairness. Both Erlis and Emma participated in the open discussion organised at the end of this workshop. In addition, Erlis presented also at the workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Rights. His presentation on Applying AI in Courts received positive feedback and served as an important building block for the discussion during the workshop.

The INTRAlaw programme of the Aarhus University organised a colloquium on 21st and 22nd November 2019 intended to discuss issues related to access to justice. The organisers were particularly interested in legal aid and digitisation and access to justice in environmental cases. Erlis Themeli was invited to participate and bring his expertise and that of our project in the discussion. During the discussion Erlis pointed out the new challenges that digital technologies bring to courts, court-users, and legislators. He pointed-out that these challenges should not be isolated from other aspects of access to justice. A comprehensive approach, like the one Building EU Civil Justice takes, is more beneficial to the parties involved. The colloquium ended with a pledge to meet again in the future and further discuss on this important topic.

On 27 September the VSR and the ESL-research programme ‘Rethinking the Rule of Law’ organised a socio-legal seminar at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. During this meeting, Linda Mulcahy (Professor of Socio-Legal Studies and the Director of the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Oxford) presented her research titled ‘The Democratic Courthouse? Unravelling the complex relationship between design, due process and dignity in English courts’. Xandra Kramer acted as a discussant for professor Mulcahy.

Additionally, Jos Hoevenaars presented results of his doctoral research on litigation before the European Court of Justice and tied it into his research on (self)representation and the impact of lawyers in the courtroom.

Following the election as a member to the Royal Netherlands Society of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) earlier this year, Xandra Kramer was installed at a ceremony on 17 September 2019, along with 21 other Dutch and foreign scholars. After giving a short speech, focusing on the importance of access to civil justice and research speerheads, the sound of the chime confirmed the installation.

Xandra was elected for her work in the area of European civil justice and private international law. The Royal Academy is the forum, conscience, and voice of the arts and sciences in the Netherlands, the Academy promotes the quality of scientific and scholarly work and strives to ensure that Dutch scholars and scientists make the best possible contribution to the cultural, social, and economic development of Dutch society. The Royal Academy currently has around 500 Dutch members and a selection of foreign members, elected for life, representing all arts and sciences.

On 3 September 2019, Erlis Themeli participated in the 110th Annual Conference of the Society of Legal Scholars, “Central Questions about Law” held at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, the United Kingdom. This Conference gathers academics from the UK and abroad to discuss almost all the topics related to law. A part of the Conference is dedicated to private international issues. Erlis presented his research on possible limits to consumer protection in the Brussels I (recast) Regulation. This study suggests that in the digital world some customers may conceal or deform their identity. As a result, unaware traders may find themselves dealing with customers domiciled in jurisdictions where they do not want to trade. The aim of the study is consider the possible consequences that new technologies have on private international law.

Xandra Kramer has been appointed as an external scientific fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Procedural Law in Luxembourg. In August she will stay at the Institute to work on several research projects.