Maria Weimer is an associate professor at the Amsterdam Law School and the acting director of the Amsterdam Centre for European Law and Governance (ACELG). She is a member of the Governing Board of the interdisciplinary Amsterdam Centre for European Studies (ACES) of the University of Amsterdam and an associate fellow of the Asser Institute for International and European Law in The Hague. Between 2018 and 2022 she has represented the Amsterdam Law School as a member of the Amsterdam Young Academy (AYA), an independent interdisciplinary plattform of 30 talented researchers from the University of Amsterdam and the Vrije Universiteit who work together to better represent young researchers in science policy and to build bridges between science and society in Amsterdam. She has also served as a member of the AYA Governing Board. She is the deputy editor-in-chief of the European Journal of Risk Regulation published with Cambridge University Press and a member of the Editorial Board of EULawLive. Before joining UvA, Maria Weimer worked as a post-doctoral researcher and lecturer at the Department of International and European Law of Maastricht University. She holds a PhD in Law from the European University Institute in Florence.
Maria Weimer's research is fundamentally driven by the inquiry into how EU law shapes health and environmental outcomes and proposes pathways through which law can catalyse sustainable change, both within Europe and globally. Her work has contributed to the advancement of interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of EU law, risk regulation and sustainability and has been published in leading international journals and by top publishers. She has an extensive track record in integrating socio-legal methods with other disciplines, especially social and political sciences and studies of regulation & governance, as evidenced by her international interdisciplinary collaborations. In the past, she participated, for example, in collaborative EU-funded projects, such as RECON (Reconstituting Democracy in Europe) and INPROFOOD (Towards Inclusive Research Programming for Sustainable Food Innovations), and InDivEU (Integrating Diversity in the European Union) funded under Horizon 2020 and led by the European University Institute.
Maria Weimer’s research is guided by the question of how governments and international organisations can secure public interests, such as environmental protection and public health and safety, under conditions of economic globalization, rapid technological innovation and multi-level governance? Substantively, her research lies at the intersection between the environment, public health, food safety and agriculture. She focuses on exploring the potential of law and governance to address urgent environmental, health and safety risks arising from the operation of modern agri-food systems; as well as to enable the transition to sustainable food and agricultural systems.
Maria Weimer has published widely in this area combining EU internal perspectives (EU risk regulation) with external perspectives (the role of the EU as a transnational regulator; international trade law and global governance). Recent publications include a monograph with OUP titled "Risk regulation in the EU internal market - lessons from agricultural biotechnology" and edited book published with Hart Publishing titled "Regulating risks in the EU - the co-production of expert and executive power".
In the past, Maria Weimer completed a personal research project (Rubicon) funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) on the role of WTO law in domestic and transnational food safety and environmental regulation. Since January 2020 she works on her second NWO funded project (Veni) on the role of the EU as a global environmental regulator with a focus on the fight against tropical deforestation, which results from agricultural expansion. The project is titled "Making the EU a global leader in fighting tropical deforestation" and runs for three years.
Key publications:
M. Weimer, Risk regulation in the internal market – lessons from agricultural biotechnology, Oxford University Press, 2019
The book offers a topical inquiry into the legal and political limits of EU regulation in the field of risk and new technologies, which are surrounded by techno-scientific complexity, uncertainty, and societal contestation. Its main contribution is to offer a new understanding of the legitimacy challenges of EU risk regulation; and to show the ways in which current interpretations of EU internal market law together with technocratic understandings of EU risk regulation exacerbate these challenges. The book uses agricultural biotechnology as a paradigmatic example to illustrate the complex intertwinement of environmental, public health, economic and social concerns in risk regulation. It analyses the drawbacks of the EU approach in this field showing its ‘risk reductionism:’ i.e. the narrow understanding of GMO risks and the exclusion of broader societal concerns related to environmental and social sustainability. Such reductionism ultimately undermines both the legitimacy and effectiveness of EU regulation in this area, and triggers new dis-integration dynamics. This text offers fresh and original insights into how far the EU can go in harmonizing regulatory approaches to risk. It also proposes new ways of re-thinking EU risk regulation to make it more responsive to different perspectives on risk and technology. A unique feature of this book is that it contributes to various strains of scholarship including risk regulation, internal market law, public administration, and studies of governance and regulation, as well as connecting these themes to broader debates about the legitimacy of European integration and new ways of differentiated integration. As a result, it assists in re-imagining the EU internal market and its regulation as a site of diversity.
M. Weimer, “Reconciling regulatory space with external accountability through WTO adjudication – trade, environment and development” Leiden Journal of International Law 30 (4) (2017) 901-924
M. Weimer, “The origins of ‘risk’ as an idea and the future of risk regulation”, European Journal of Risk Regulation 8 (2) (2017) 10-17
M. Weimer & A. de De Ruijter (eds), Regulating Risks in the European Union – The Co-production of Expert and Executive Power, Hart Publishing, 2017
L. Marin & M. Weimer (eds), Regulating Emergent Technologies, Special Issue of the European Journal of Risk Regulation, 3/2016
M. Weimer, “Risk regulation and deliberation in EU administrative governance”, European Law Journal, 21 (5) (2015) 622-640
M. Weimer & E. Vos, “The Role of the EU in Transnational Regulation of Food Safety: Extending Experimentalist Governance?” in Jonathan Zeitlin (ed), The Role of the EU in Transnational Regulation: Extending Experimentalist Governance? (Oxford University Press, 2015) p. 51-80
More publications:
Maria Weimer contributes to the teaching of the Department of International Public and European Law, in the following courses:
Moot Court in EU law, Minor Law and Justice in the European Union (course coordinator)
Europees Recht