Jury report for Prof. D.M. (Deirdre) Curtin

Professor International and European Governance at Utrecht University

Professor Curtin receives the NWO/Spinoza Prize 2007 for her outstanding contribution to the development and promotion of international and European law and for her groundbreaking visions concerning the governance of international organisations such as the European Union.

Deirdre Curtin (17 January 1960, Dublin, Ireland) studied law at University College Dublin and Trinity College Dublin. After several years of working as a Legal Secretary (Référendaire) to the Irish judge at the Court of Justice of the European Communities, Luxembourg, she was awarded her doctorate in 1991 from the National University of Ireland. At the age of just 32, Curtin was appointed as professor of Law of International Organisations at the Faculty of Law and director of the Europa Institute at Utrecht University. In 2003 she moved to the professorship of International and European Governance and the multidisciplinary Utrecht School of Governance (USBO). In that same year she was the first woman to be appointed a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in the section law. Additionally for many years she was visiting professor at the Europa College in Bruges and she is currently associated with the Centre for European Law at the University of Cambridge.

Deirdre Curtin is the leading Dutch expert in the area of law and governance of the European Union. Her specialist fields are international law and international governance. She studies phenomena such as democracy, legitimacy and accountability in a groundbreaking manner. Together with her colleagues from USBO she has further developed the term accountability into a phenomenon that can be empirically investigated. With this approach she demonstrated how the EU suffers from shortcomings in accountability. In addition to the jurisprudential angles she also draws upon public administration concepts in her analyses. Cross-fertilisation between these two perspectives led amongst other things to important, innovative insights into the governability of international organisations.

Curtin exerts an enormous influence on her research field and is a highly sought after speaker as well as a member of numerous national and international advisory committees. Her article about the constitutional structure of the European Union published in 1993 is still one of the most cited articles about the European Union. She has exerted a considerable influence on the European legislation (2001) granting public access to documents of certain European institutions, for which she wrote part of the draft. Her multidisciplinary view on the EU as a political and administrative entity has clearly shaped the current debate about the EU.

Deirdre Curtin is the author of a large number of publications in the foremost international journals and handbooks. Her list of publications is not only of exceptional quality but for a lawyer also extremely extensive. This is a considerable achievement, as since the late 1990s she has only worked part-time (0.6 fte) at the university due to the care for her four children.

Deirdre Curtin is a first-rate and leading player in the field of European law. With considerable charisma the lawyer knows how to promote her ideas. Long before anyone else she warned of the insidious growth in the number of independent governing bodies that threaten to become a wide-ranging and unwieldy European administrative apparatus. In this area in particular the Spinoza committee expects to hear a lot more from her in the future.

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Further information for the press available from:

• Prof. D.M. (Deirdre) Curtin (Utrecht University)
• t: +31 30 253 8101, d.m.curtin@uu.nl or dcurtin@tiscali.nl

This jury report served as the basis for the speech given by Prof. Jenny Gierveld upon the announcement of the NWO/Spinoza Prizes 2007 on 4 June 2007.