Our project focuses on the analysis of decision-making processes in the European Union (EU) and explores how approaches and tools to understand decision-making found in both the Natural and the Social Sciences can be linked, knowledge between these traditions exchanged and synergies utilized. To explore…

More than 800 universities have called on the European Council to come to be more visionary in its ambitions for European research, innovation and education. They believe the current budget to be insufficient.

Matthias Haentjens, Jouke Tegelaar and Dorine Verheij have recently published the chapter Financial Market Regulation and Supervision in the new volume of the prestigious The Law of the European Union (previously Kapteyn and VerLoren van Themaat).

Jorrit Rijpma, Professor of European Law, together with Greek independent researcher Apostolis Fotiadis, investigated the European Commission’s enforcement powers in relation to fundamental rights compliance at Europe’s external borders. The study was commissioned and funded by the Greens Group of the…

A month after the event, we can say the inaugural lecture of Prof. Luuk van Middelaar on “The European Union and the politics of events”, on 23 September 2016, has obtained good coverage in the Dutch national media.

Just published: United in incoherence – Private law concepts under pressure from European financial law (in Dutch), in: Tijdschift voor privaatrecht 2017-4

Simona Demková, Assistant professor at the Europa Institute of Leiden University, publishes her book ‘Automated Decision-Making and Effective Remedies: The New Dynamics in the Protection of EU Fundamental Rights in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice’.

Lecture, CHEI Seminar - Book launch

Research at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies is primarily carried out under its Research Programme ‘Exploring the Frontiers of International Law’.

The newly established Luxembourg Centre for European Law held its inaugural conference on 10-11 October 2025, exploring the theme of 'European Union law and values in a changing world'.

A portrait of the complex historical process of over 500 years of European colonialism in the New World.

Impressions by Dr. Lilian Ruhe

Recently, a large number of Dutch MPs announced they will leave the political arena. They are - even if they leave voluntarily - entitled to redundancy pay, a kind of benefit.

How do processes of coalition-formation influence patterns of decision-making in the European Union?

Enduring influence of Roman law

The new European migration pact is intended to speed up the asylum process in Europe. A pragmatic and realistic plan that will at last provide a fast and fair handling of asylum applications in Europe.

Consensus among Member States on the return of failed asylum seekers is currently lacking. For that reason, the Head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, wants new legislation that provides for a uniform policy. Armin Cuyvers, Professor of European Law, commented on the issue on Dutch radio…

Leiden University and LUMC benefit from unique knowledge gained from research and teaching about healthy lifestyles. We want to bring this knowledge together into one place, and we want to share it even more effectively than we do now.

The European Parliament is set to vote on the approval of the new Commission, and some Parliament members have already expressed concern over the controversial appointment of Olivér Várhelyi to the role of commissioner. Armin Cuyvers, Professor of European Law, discusses this issue in Dutch financial…

How can groundbreaking research help Europe tackle the huge challenges it faces? At the launch of the Leiden Europe Hub, academics and policymakers discussed this in the heart of European democracy: the European Parliament.

Vasiliki Kosta presented her research on ‘The EU fundamental right to freedom of the arts and sciences: exploring the limits on the commercialisation of academia' at the Maastricht Centre for European Law on 28 February 2023. The seminar was convened by Dr Annalisa Volpato, and Dr Vigjilenza Abazi acted…

Recently, Ingrid Leijten’s book Core Socio-Economic Rights and the European Court of Human Rights was published with Cambridge University Press. The monograph was published in the series Cambridge Studies in European Law and Policy (edited by Laurence Gormley and Jo Shaw) and deals with the protection…

Students awarded the highest scores to Leiden University and the Radboud University Nijmegen. These are the findings of an annual survey by Elsevier into the best study programmes in the Netherlands. Elsevier Magazine has a weekly readership of half a million, making it one of the most iinfluential…

De Universiteit Leiden staat op de twaalfde plek in de UI Green Metric, een wereldwijde duurzaamheidsranglijst voor universiteiten.

Vanaf september 2025 biedt de Faculteit Governance and Global Affairs de bacheloropleiding Cybersecurity & Cybercrime aan. Deze unieke Nederlandstalige opleiding leidt studenten op tot veelzijdige cyberexperts. ‘Er is veel vraag naar specialisten op het gebied van cybersecurity en cybercrime’.

In Europe, citizens have a right of access to government information. The European Commission, however, has various methods to prevent this. For example, destroying all e-mails, invoking state security and protection of privacy, and not taking minutes. As a result, it is almost impossible to review…

This book, written by two representatives of Leiden Law School, describes the framework of the European Insolvency Regulation (recast) (‘EIR Recast’), in force since June 2017.

On 10 July 2020, the final of the European Law Moot Court Competition took place online before an impressive line-up of academics and practitioners of EU law.

The League of European Research Universities (LERU) was launched in Leiden 20 years ago. LERU is a partnership of 23 leading research universities, including the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Leiden, Leuven and Heidelberg. It celebrated this anniversary last week with a multi-day conference in…

With this quote in mind, we organised an alumni event in Brussels for those alumni that live and work in the Brussels Area. 67 mostly young alumni - the majority graduated in the years 2010-2019 - showed up at the beautifully renovated Holland House, situated near the lively Place du Luxembourg (better…

LUCSoR has chairs in Comparative Religion, Islam in the West, Christianity, and Judaism. Main areas of expertise include ancient Mesopotamian religions, the Enlightenment, Islam in the West, and new spiritual movements.

The Europa Institute was represented in all four regional finals of this year’s European Law Moot Court!

The newly established Luxembourg Centre for European Law held its inaugural conference on 10-11 October 2025, exploring the theme of “European Union law and values in a changing world”. Martijn was invited to speak about the relationship between European values and democracy.

Lecture

Furious protesters in Budapest and other Hungarian cities demand the departure of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. The reason for the large-scale protests is the adaptation of the labor law, especially lucrative for German companies and investors, by the Hungarian prime minister.

Dimiter Toshkov, Associate Professor at Leiden University, told CGTN Europe that the Dutch election outcome reflects growing support for pragmatic and pro-European politics. He highlights D66’s focus on education, climate policy and European cooperation as key to its strong performance.

The tenth Europa Lecture was delivered by Corinna Wissels, State Councillor at the Administrative Jurisdiction Division of the Dutch Council of State, deputy justice of the Dutch Trade and Industry Appeals Tribunal and member of the EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement arbitration panel.

Regular users of cannabis are less aware of their own mistakes, and they are not good at creative thinking. This is the conclusion drawn by psychologist Mikael Kowal from his research on the effects of cannabis. PhD defence 6 October.

This book aims to unravel some of the mysteries surrounding this exceptional group of larger-than-life Bronze Age blades.

The ECtHR needs to provide effective rights protection, but it also needs to set clear standards while showing deference to decisions made at the national level. Especially when socio-economic issues are concerned, meeting these different demands is a challenging task.

In this article, Madeleine Hosli, Professor of International Relations at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, and Jaroslaw Kantorowicz, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Security and Global affairs, discusses the relevance of structural variables in a time where European politics are…

On 19 October 2023, Vincent Delhomme spoke at the conference on ‘European Judicial Narratives’, hosted by the University of Louvain Saint-Louis in Brussels. Vincent participated in the panel devoted to the reception of these judicial narratives in the European legal epistemic community.

Can a computer give just as good a judgment as a judge? Professor emeritus Law and IT believes it can and talks about using computers in the courtroom in a podcast of the Universiteit van Vlaanderen.