Globalisation & Law Network seminar with Rodrigo Vallejo Garretón

Digitalisation and climate change are among the most pressing challenges of our time. In recent years, these challenges have sparked prolific legislative activity at the EU level. Scholars actively debate the strengths and shortcomings of the EU’s approach to addressing the environmental crisis and the growing power of Big Tech. However, the interplay between these bodies of law remains under-examined. 

On 4 July 2025, the Globalisation & Law Network welcomed Dr Rodrigo Vallejo Garretón, Assistant Professor in Private Law at the University of Amsterdam, whose research fills an important gap in the academic literature on EU law. In 2024, he was awarded a Veni grant to pursue the project ‘Twin-Law: An Experimentalist Law for the European Twin (Green and Digital) Transition’. During his talk, Rodrigo demonstrated why these current issues are not independent but highly interdependent, making their holistic exploration crucial. Rebecca Ravalli served as a discussant.

One of the main sources of inspiration for Rodrigo’s project was the European Commission’s 2022 Strategic Foresight Report by the European Commission. While it highlighted the close link between Europe's twin transitions, it glossed over some of the important problems underlying EU environmental and digital law, such as the immense rule-making power wielded by private corporations. Against this backdrop, the elaborates an experimentalist, synthetic study by interconnecting the EU ‘Green Deal’ and ‘Digital Age’ legal-regulatory models. One of the aspirations behind this project is to develop an integral European policy model that can inspire this ‘twin transition’ elsewhere in the world.

Curious about the current challenges of law and governance? You can register for the upcoming research seminars organised by the Globalisation & Law Network. We look forward to seeing you there!

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