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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)

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Published: November 7, 2020

On 6 November 2020, the ERC group organized a small scale webinar on the occasion of adoption of the ELI-Unidroit Model Rules and the upcoming kick-off of the Vici project related to our ERC project on Affordable Access to Justice: The ELI-Unidroit Model European Rules of Civil Procedure: soft law shaping the future of European Civil Procedure?

Xandra Kramer presented on the creation, main principles and future prospects of the Model Rules. Eva Storskrubb (University of Uppsala) discussed the Cost rules, in the drafting of which she was closely involved being one of the co-reporters. Masood Ahmed (University of Leicester) viewed the rules on cost, management and ADR from the English perspective. Despite the small set up and short notice, over 60 people participated in the webinar and the discussion.