ODR Forum 2019
News
Sustaining Access to Justice in Europe: New Avenues for Costs and Funding

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


Published: October 30, 2019
On the 29th of October, Emma van Gelder gave a presentation at the ODR Forum 2019, held in Virginia, United States of America. This conference gathers ODR experts and practitioners from around the world to discuss topical issues within ODR. Emma presented her research on the European Union approach to consumer ODR with references to two case-studies she undertook giving insights derived from the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. She outlined the EU legislation on Consumer ADR/ODR, discussing the ADR Directive 2013/11 and the ODR Regulation 524/2013, and the first results of this legislation in practice. Based on the findings as well as the case-studies, she gave some recommendations and thoughts on how to improve the legislation.