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Tracing and confiscating criminal assets is an essential part of the fight against organised crime, because it provides better insight into the financial logistics of criminal operations and "hits criminals where it really hurts: in their wallets." However, the challenges posed by cross-border cooperation in the field of financial investigations complicate the fight against serious forms of crime. Research into cross-border police cooperation and the challenges associated with it is however relatively scarce. Moreover, this type of research often focuses on classic forms of police and judicial cooperation and tends to ignore financial aspects of crime. To fill this gap, the study "Cross-border Financial Police Investigations" has been started.

On 12th November 2025, the Maastricht European Private Law Institute (M-EPLI), together with the Research Project “Revocable Properties”, organised a Roundtable on 'Novel and Recurrent Challenges in Ownership’, in which, next to more general-theoretical property questions, more in particular the possibility of temporary ownership was discussed as introduced in the Catalan Civil Code.

These last few weeks, Minister Paul of Social Affairs and Employment of the outgoing cabinet has been in the news for unilaterally deciding no longer to gradually phase out the Dutch regulation that allows temporary employment agencies to deduct a quarter of the minimum wage from migrant workers salaries in exchange for housing. That regulation would decrease by 5 percent starting January 1st, reaching 0 percent by New Year's Day 2030. Paul's predecessor, Van Hijum, intended to introduce this legislation to combat human trafficking for the purpose of labour exploitation involving temporary employment agencies by making migrant workers less dependent onthem. Human traffickers often make migrant workers and other vulnerable populations multiply dependent on them by requiring them not only to work for them but also be housed by them. Once a worker loses their job, they no longer have a place to stay overnight.

On 16 April 2025, M-EPLI hosted Professor Dr Bram Akkermans from Maastricht University’s Faculty of Law and Professor Dr Lorna Fox O’Mahony from the University of Essex, England, to discuss the evolving role of private property within liberal democratic systems. Their proposal centred on the idea that private property is not merely a legal construct but a crucial interface between the economic, social, and environmental constitutions. The discussion was moderated by both speakers together with Dr. Kate O’Reilly from Maastricht University.

On 27 November 2025, the tenth edition of the workshop series on Ius Commune in the Making took place within the 29^th Ius Commune Conference organised by the University of Amsterdam. This blog entry reproduces a public address by one of the members of the organising committee of that workshop series.