US-Europe conference lecture collectivizing litigation
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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
Conference_Programme_2023_(1).pdf (euciviljustice.eu)


Published: March 27, 2021
Xandra Kramer presented at a conference organized by Emory University Law School and Oxford University on developments in civil justice in the US and Europe, Qua Vadis civil justice? The first part of this three-part Zoom event on Trends in Civil Procedure took place on 26 March 2021. One of the statements was that European civil justice policy, contrary to the US, while also under pressure from the efficiency advocates, continues to focus on encouraging litigation. Xandra focused on collectivizing litigation in Europe and the Netherlands in particular. She discussed trends and developments in European civil justice, where in recent years collective redress and digitisation have been key issues and in the Netherlands where the establishment of the Netherlands Commercial Court in 2019 and the completion of the collective redress system in 2020 are highlights. Despite the emphasis on collective redress in recent years, there are no indications that litigation has become more important. In the European context, enhancing ADR by putting quality standards into place and the setting up the ODR platform are equally important.