In the next five years Xandra Kramer, Professor of European civil procedure at the Erasmus School of Law, will conduct research with three postdocs and two PhD researchers that will contribute to effective and equal access to justice for EU citizens.
Out of more than 2,300 applications the European Research Council, Professor Kramer was awarded with a prestigious Consolidator Grant for her research project ‘Building EU civil justice: challenges of procedural innovations bridging access to justice’. This project builds further on her NWO-VIDI research of 2010, and a EUR Fellowship of 2004.
Professor Kramer’s research aims to improve access to civil justice as guaranteed by the Human Rights Convention and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. Civil justice is under constant pressure resulting from the often high costs, complexity and long duration of civil procedures in many EU Member States. Key issues in the current efforts to bridge the access to justice gap at the EU and national level are digitalization of procedures, privatization of justice, an increased possibility of self-representation, and specialization of courts and procedures. While these are potentially ground-breaking in contributing to easier and cheaper access to courts and private forms of adjudication, a one-sided focus on procedural efficiency or economic advantage may have repercussions for procedural justice and the inclusive quality of the civil justice system. The project will investigate how these trends influence access to justice in five representative Member States, and what the repercussions are for the emerging EU civil justice system.
The project will undoubtedly further strengthen the profile of the Erasmus School of Law as a research institution with a strong social and business-driven orientation that is committed to promoting international and interdisciplinary research.
