The Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) has received almost two million euros from the European Research Council (ERC) after obtaining a new Consolidator Grant, aimed at research staff with 7 to 12 years of experience who want to consolidate a research group. UC3M is one of the eleven Spanish universities that have obtained funding in this call. The project was presented by Juan Antonio Mayoral Díaz-Asensio, from UC3M’s Dept. of Social Sciences.
“The relevance of judicial trust for the legal integration of Europe” is the title of the research project led by Juan Antonio Mayoral that has obtained ERC funding for the next five years. Its main objective is to define the interdisciplinary nature of the concept of trust between judges in the European Union’s legal system.
As part of the project they aim to develop empirical indicators that are useful in different aspects. Firstly, to help determine legal, sociological and political factors that lead judges to trust or distrust one another. Secondly, these indicators will be used to test the impact that judicial trust has on cooperation between courts through mechanisms such as, for example, preliminary rulings where national judges have the power to request the European Union Court of Justice to assist them in the interpretation of EU law.
For this work the project will implement a mixed methods design combining the legal analysis of judicial decisions with interviews, experiments and surveys of judges from the 27 member countries of the European Union and the EU Court of Justice.
“The results will help to understand the importance of trust for the functioning of judicial systems and to identify practices and institutions that are capable of increasing mutual trust within European courts” explains Juan Antonio Mayoral. In fact, this proposal “has generated interest from both judges and various judicial organisations, including the European Network of Judicial Councils, whose support and participation will be crucial for the project to succeed,” he says.
Finally, regarding the Consolidator Grant competition process, Juan A. Mayoral emphasises that “obtaining a grant of this magnitude is also the result of the hard work carried out and support received by the family, staff and colleagues at UC3M and other institutions where I have developed my career, such as iCourts”.
UC3M is one of the Spanish universities with the highest number of ERC grants, a commitment to the internationalisation of EU research. Specifically, the University has already obtained 14 ERC projects (8 Starting Grants and 6 Consolidator Grants) with a total funding of approximately 24 million euros.
More information here.
