Book launch ‘Researching the Court of Justice’
News
Mapping Study TPLF in Europe
The European Commission has released the Mapping Study on Third Party Litigation Funding (TPLF) in the European Union. This comprehensive study provides a detailed
analysis of legislation, practices, and stakeholder perspectives across the EU and in selected third countries.
Over the past years, third party litigation funding has become one of the most debated topics in European civil justice. The EU Representative Actions Directive - requiring Member States to establish collective action mechanisms for EU consumer cases - has intensified this discussion. Collective actions to obtain damages often involve significant expenses and procedural risks. In the absence of other suitable funding mechanisms, TPLF has gained prominence as a means to support such claims.
This trend was also reflected in extensive research, reported earlier on this website, carried out at the request of the Dutch Ministry of Justice on the WAMCA (the Dutch Act on Collective Damages Claims), which highlighted the growing reliance on third party funding in the Netherlands.
In September 2022, the European Parliament adopted a Resolution on Responsible Private Funding of Litigation, urging the European Commission to consider stricter regulation of TPLF. In response, the Commission commissioned this in-depth Mapping Study, which analyses existing legal frameworks, practical experiences, and the divergent approaches among Member States.
From our research group, Jos Hoevenaars acted as national co-reporter, and Xandra Kramer contributed as a member of the advisory board. The findings of this study will play a key role in shaping the future policy debate on TPLF regulation in the EU.
Published: May 13, 2022
On May 11th Jos joined other authors for the launch of the long-awaited book ‘Researching the European Court of Justice: Methodological Shifts and Law’s Embeddedness’, edited by Edited by Mikael Rask Madsen (University of Copenhagen) Fernanda Nicola (American University, Washington DC) and Antoine Vauchez (Université Paris 1-Sorbonne). This new book, presented by the Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre of Excellence for International Courts(iCourts) at the university of Copenhagen, takes stock of the on-going ‘methodological turn’ in the field of EU law scholarship. Introducing a new generation of scholars of the European Court of Justice from law, history, sociology, political science and linguistics, the book provides a set of novel interdisciplinary research strategies and empirical materials for the study of the Court of Justice of the European Union. In his contribution Jos describes the use of a bottom-up approach in studying the dynamics behind litigation before the CJEU by drawing on research conducted among litigating parties that saw their cases referred to Luxembourg through a reference for a preliminary ruling.