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

Conference_Programme_2023_(1).pdf (euciviljustice.eu)

Permalink


EU flag ERC logo

Published: February 20, 2020

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.