Seminar series EU Civil Justice

The ERC Building EUCivil Justice team organized a series of six seminars between May and July2021. The series covered a variety of topics in the field of European civil justice and zoom in on the key topics our group has been working on over the past four years. These include the privatization and digitalization of civil justice, cross-border judicial co-operation, international business courts, and self-representation. Each session brought together invited speakers and our own researchers. The webinars gathered between 25 to 85 participants from all over the world per session and resulted in lively and fruitful debates, despite the online format.

The first seminar, organized by Betül Kas, was dedicated to The Role of Out-of-Court Justice in the European Enforcement Regime, discussing among others the role of Article 47 TFEU and the process of obtaining remedies in the Volkswagen diesel case. During the second seminar, organised by Erlis Themeli, the discussion zoomed in on Modernising European Cross-Border Judicial Collaboration, including an ongoing digitization project of the European Commission, the Dutch participation in e-Codex and digitisation in the context of uniform European procedures. The third seminar was organised by Emma van Gelder, and was dedicated to Digital Constitutionalism and European Digital Policies and discussed remedies in the context of European policies, the role of private platforms and judicial review. The fourth seminar, organized by Jos Hoevenaars, dealt with the topic Representing Future Generations: Private Law aspects of Climate Change Litigation. Making the shift from self-representation under the ERC project to the representation of present and future generations it discussed different aspects of recent climate change litigation, with a focus on the recent Dutch Shell case. The fifth seminar by Georgia Antonopoulou was dedicated to the Arbitralization of Courts, and discussed how recently established international business courts copy features of arbitration and what the limits are. The sixth and last seminar entitled European Civil Justice in Transition: Past, Present & Future, moderated by Xandra Kramer and Alexandre Biard concluded the series. The speakers addressed the upcoming revision of the Brussels I-bis Regulation, digitisation and the development of integrated dispute resolution, trust and quality in civil justice and the future of civil justice.