Maria Weimer is Professor of European Studies, with a special focus on EU Law, at the European Studies Department of the University of Amsterdam. Together with her Chair group, she pursues an interdisciplinary research agenda at the intersection of Law and the Humanities. This involves exploring European law as an integral part of Europe’s broader historical, political, and cultural experience, and in turn, how European law itself actively shapes these deep European currents.

At the heart of Weimer’s scholarship lies a vital question: How can democratic governance be preserved and reimagined in a global risk society? She critically examines European law’s role in managing complex, transnational risks related to health, the environment, and sustainability amidst rapid technological advances and shifting geopolitics. With a distinctly interdisciplinary approach at the intersection of Law, Social Sciences and the Humanities, Weimer’s work delves into the fundamental legal, political, and cultural transformations brought about by these global shifts, analyzing their impact on society and democratic inclusion.

Before joining the European Studies Department, Maria Weimer served as an Associate Professor in EU Law at the Amsterdam Law School, where her interdisciplinary scholarship significantly shaped socio-legal and regulatory perspectives on European integration. She has held key academic leadership roles, including Director of the Amsterdam Centre for European Law and Governance (ACELG) and board member of the Amsterdam Centre for European Studies (ACES). She has been awarded several research excellence grants from the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) and held visiting fellowships at institutions such as New York University School of Law and the European University Institute in Florence. She earned her PhD in Law from the European University Institute.

Maria Weimer contributes actively to European policy and academic debates through her editorial roles as Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of Risk Regulation (Cambridge University Press) and as a member of the Editorial Board of EULawLive. She has contributed to several EU-funded international collaborations, such as RECON (Reconstituting Democracy in Europe), INPROFOOD (Towards Inclusive Research Programming for Sustainable Food Innovations), Experimentalist Regimes in Transnational Governance (co-sponsored by the Watson Institute of Brown University), and InDivEU (Integrating Diversity in the European Union). Furthermore, she has served as an independent expert for institutions including the European Parliament, the European Commission, and various environmental civil society organizations.

How can democratic governance be preserved and reimagined in a global risk society? And, what is the role of European law in managing complex, transnational risks related to health, the environment, and sustainability amidst rapid technological advances and shifting geopolitics? These questions drive Maria Weimer’s scholarly work. Adopting a distinctly interdisciplinary approach at the intersection of Law, Social Sciences and the Humanities, she delves into the fundamental legal, political, and cultural transformations brought about by these global shifts, analyzing their impact on society and democratic inclusion.

Risk, Regulation, and Governance

Over the past two decades, Weimer has been a leading voice in EU risk regulation. She explores risk not only as a regulatory object - in areas like health, sustainability, and the digital economy - but also as a regulatory principle underpinning governance and legitimacy. Her work reveals how political power in EU risk regulation is shifting from parliaments to less visible arenas such as bureaucracies, regulatory networks, and expert bodies, raising pressing questions about transparency, democratic oversight, and legitimacy, as well as the proper balancing between economic (e.g. health, environmental & rights protection) and non-economic (e.g. growth, innovation, competitiveness) values and concerns. By integrating insights from public law, regulatory governance, science and technology studies, and social and political theory, she has helped establish EU risk regulation as a distinct interdisciplinary field.

EU Law and the Global Green Transition

A key focus of Weimer’s recent research is the external impact of EU law on global efforts to achieve a sustainable economy, particularly through the European Green Deal and its global ambitions. She examines the EU’s turn toward regulatory unilateralism via supply chain-based instruments like the Deforestation Regulation, assessing their legitimacy and effectiveness amid global inequality and geopolitical tensions. She studies how EU law is implemented beyond Europe’s borders, while also developing new normative and conceptual frameworks to address evolving notions of legitimacy, justice, and territoriality in an interconnected and unequal world. This work contributes to legal scholarship, while also enriching broader philosophical, cultural, and political debates about Europe’s role in the global order.

Experts and Democracy

Weimer further investigates the growing reliance on expertise within democratic governance. As democracies depend more on specialized knowledge to navigate complex global challenges, she scrutinizes how EU law shapes the role of experts - often unelected and operating within private or regulatory institutions - in policymaking. Her research engages critically with questions of democratic legitimacy in expert-driven regulation as well the role of knowledge and truth in democracy, more generally.

European law and the Humanities

Maria Weimer’s research deeply resonates with core concerns of the Humanities, engaging with the historical evolution of European legal and regulatory institutions, the cultural dimensions of expertise and risk perception, and the philosophical underpinnings of legitimacy, authority, and democracy in transnational governance. Her work interrogates how legal norms and regulatory practices are shaped by broader cultural narratives and historical contexts, and how they, in turn, influence collective understandings of responsibility, progress, and justice. By critically examining the role of knowledge and power in lawmaking - through lenses informed by political and social theory - Weimer’s scholarship contributes to a richer, more nuanced understanding of the European project as not only a legal and political undertaking but also a profoundly cultural and philosophical one.

Books:

M. Weimer, Risk regulation in the internal market – lessons from agricultural biotechnology, Oxford University Press, 2019

M. Weimer & A. de De Ruijter (eds), Regulating Risks in the European Union – The Co-production of Expert and Executive Power, Hart Publishing, 2017

Special issues:

L. Marin & M. Weimer (eds), Regulating Emergent Technologies, Special Issue of the European Journal of Risk Regulation, 3/2016

Peer-reviewed journal articles:

M. Weimer, The EU global regulatory state and the search for transnational democracy – reflections from the edges of Europe, European Law Open 2025

M. Morvillo & M. Weimer, ‘Who shapes the CJEU regulatory jurisprudence? On the epistemic power of economic actors and ways to counter it,’ European Law Open, Vol 1, Issue 3, 510-548, 2022 (open access)

E. Hickey & M. Weimer, ‘The transparency of EU agency science – towards proactive transparency,’ Common Market Law Review 59: 1-38, 2022

J. Zeitlin, D. van der Duin, T. Kuhn, M. Weimer, M. D. Jensen ‘Governance Reforms and Public Acceptance of Regulatory Decisions: Cross-National Evidence from Linked Survey Experiments on Pesticides Authorization in the EU" Regulation & Governance, (2022) Vol 17, Issue 4,  (open access)

A. Pacces & M. Weimer, “From Diversity to Cooperation – A European Approach to Covid19,” European Journal of Risk Regulation, 11 (2) (2020), 283-296 (open access)

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 (open access)

M. Weimer & L. Marin, “Regulating new and emerging technologies – the role of law in managing the tension between risk and innovation” Introduction to special issue edited by L. Marin & M. Weimer, Regulating Emergent Technologies, European Journal of Risk Regulation, 7 (3) (2016) 469-474

M. Weimer, “Risk regulation and deliberation in EU administrative governance”, European Law Journal, 21 (5) (2015) 622-640

M. Weimer, “‘It’s the Politics, Stupid.’ Or is Reality More Complex?” European Journal of Risk Regulation, 4 (2) (2013) 297-306

M. Weimer, “Applying Precaution in EU Authorization of Genetically Modified Products – Challenges and Suggestions for Reform,” 16 (5) European Law Journal (2010) 624-657

M. Weimer, “What Price Flexibility? – The recent Commission Proposal to allow for national ‘opt-outs’ on GMO cultivation under the Deliberate Release Directive and the Comitology post-Lisbon”, European Journal of Risk Regulation 1 (4) (2010) 345-352

M. Weimer, “The Regulatory Challenge of Animal Cloning for Food – the Risks of Risk Regulation in the European Union,” European Journal of Risk Regulation 1 (1) (2010) 31-39

M. Weimer, “Regulating Animal Cloning under WTO Law – Policy Choice versus Science,” Finnish Yearbook of International Law, Vol. 20 (2009) 291-332

Book chapters:

D. Curtin & M. Weimer, “The Court of Justice of the European Union – supranational adjudicator and accountability forum” in F. Amtenbrink, D. Curtin, P.J. Kuyper, A. McDonnell and B. De Witte (eds), The Law of the European Union, fifth edition (The Hague: Kluwer 2018)

M. Weimer & A. De Ruijter, “Regulating Risks in the European Union – The co-production of expert and executive power” in idem (eds) Regulating risks in the European Union – The co-production of expert and executive power (Hart Publishing 2017)

M. Weimer & G. Pisani, “Expertise as justification: the contested legitimation of the EU risk administration”, in Weimer & De Ruijter (eds) Regulating risks in the EU – the co-production of expert and executive power (Hart Publishing 2017)

E. Vos & M. Weimer, “Differentiated integration or uniform regime? National derogations from EU internal market measures” in B. De Witte, A. Ott and E. Vos (eds), “Between Flexibility and Disintegration: The Trajectory of Differentiation in EU Law” (Edward Elgar 2017)

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

M. Weimer, “Risk regulation, GMOs, and the challenges to deliberation in EU governance - politicisation and scientification as co-producing trends” in C. Joerges & C. Glinski (eds), The European Crisis and the Transformation of Transnational Governance (Hart Publishing, 2014) p. 293-316

C. Joerges & M. Weimer, “A Crisis of Executive Managerialism in the European Union – No Alternative?” in Joanne Scott, Gràinne De Bùrca & Claire Kilpatrick (eds), Critical Legal Perspectives on Global Governance. Liber Amicorum for David Trubek (Hart Publishing, 2013), p. 295-322

M. Weimer, “EU Risk Governance of ‘Cloned Food’ – Regulatory Uncertainty Between Trade and Non-Trade” In: Marjolein Van Asselt, Esther Versluis and Ellen Vos (eds) Science and Politics in EU Risk Governance: Integrating Legal and Social Science Perspectives (Taylor & Francis/Routledge, 2013) p. 33-58

Other academic publications:

J. Zeitlin, M, Weimer, D. van der Duin, T. Kuhn, M. Jensen, ‘Reforming EU Pesticides Regulation, Rebuilding Public Support: Evidence from Survey Experiments in Six Member States’, Amsterdam Centre for European Studies Research Paper No. 2021/03

M. Weimer, C. Eckes, & K. Cseres (eds), The rule of law in the technological age – challenges and opportunities for the EU, ACELG Working Paper 2017-02

Schrauwen, C. Eckes, and M. Weimer, “Inclusion and Exclusion in the European Union” Amsterdam Centre for European Law Working paper No 2016-05

M. Weimer, “Reconciling Regulatory Space with External Accountability through WTO Adjudication – Trade, Environment and Development” Postnational Rulemaking Working Paper No 2016-09

M. Weimer & G. Pisani, “Expertise as justification: the contested legitimation of the EU risk administration” Postnational Rulemaking Working Paper No 2016-06

M. Weimer & G. Pisani, “The EU adventures of ‘Hercules’ – Report on the EU authorization of the genetically modified maize 1507”, European Journal of Risk Regulation Issue 2/2014

M. Weimer, “The Right to Adopt Post-Market Restrictions of Genetically Modified Crops in the EU – A shift from De-Centralised Multi-Level to Centralised Governance in the Case of GM Foods”, Case note on Court of Justice of the European Union, Joined Cases C-58/10 to C-68/10 Monsanto SAS and Others, European Journal of Risk Regulation, Issue 3/2012

M. Weimer, “Administrative Constitutionalism and European Conflicts Law” in: Christian Joerges and Tommi Ralli (eds) After Globalisation – New Patters of Conflicts, RECON Report No 15, Arena, Oslo, 2011

M. Weimer, “Legitimacy through Precaution in European Regulation of GMOs?” in: Christian Joerges/Poul Kjaer (eds.), Transnational Standards of Social Protection: Contrasting European and International Governance, RECON Report No 4 (Arena, Oslo), 2008

BA European Studies:

• Institutional and Substantive EU Law
• Democracy and Truth
• Theories and Practices of Human Rights in Europe
• Coming Together, Coming Apart - Theories and Processes of European Integration and Enlargement
• Sustainability in the Internal Market
• European Studies at Work

MA European Policy:

• The Power of Law

Advanced Master of Technology Governance:

• Complexity and Risk