Privacy Statement

This statement explains how we safeguard your privacy and comply with your rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

What is the purpose of this survey?

The Attitudes at the European Court of Justice Survey (AECS) is a research survey, conducted at the University of Vienna, Austria. It seeks to capture how experts in European law perceive the attitudes and orientations of the judges at the European Court of Justice (ECJ). In contrast to other high courts attitudinal information about ECJ judges cannot be inferred from existing sources. Socio-legal research shows that judicial attitudes are important determinants of judicial decision-making and nominations but given the lack of data it is still unknown if this is also holds for the most influential international court, the ECJ. The present survey collects the information detailed below to study to what extent the ECJ’s attitudinal composition influences how the Court develops its jurisprudence and how European Union member states select nominees for the ECJ bench.

Why have I been invited to participate?

We have carefully selected respondents based on their professional and academic expertise in European law. You have received an invitation, because our research indicates that you are either a professional lawyer with strong practical litigation experience at the ECJ or a highly reputed legal researcher with strong experience in the of European law scholarship.

What information do we collect in the survey?

We collect the following data: your gender, your profession, the length of your career in the legal profession (in decades), the decade of your birth, your email address (if you sign up to receive information about the study or to participate in the price draw), your assessment of certain characteristics of the judges at the European Court of Justice, your attitudes toward certain aspects of European politics, and your choice to participate in a price draw or, alternatively, your choice of a charity for a donation.

Prior to your participation, we also collected your email address from publicly available sources to invite you to participate in the survey.

After we collect your responses and before processing them further, we clear them of potentially identifying information, such as email addresses.

Who processes the survey information?

For this survey, Henning Deters acts as the Data Controller under the GDPR. He is the principal investigator of the AECS project at the University of Vienna (FWF Project Number P 33773-G).

Qualtrics LLC acts as Data Processor under the GDPR, processing the survey on behalf of and in accordance with the instructions of the Data Controller. The Data Controller (Henning Deters) and the Data Processor (Qualtrics LLC) have signed the modernized Standard contractual clauses for data transfers between EU and non-EU countries (4 June 2021), ensuring compliance with the GDPR.

How do we anonymise the survey information?

The only identifying information that we collect and process for this survey is your email address. We use it to invite selected experts to the survey, to track actual participation and send reminders (where applicable), to send you research results if you signed up to receive them, to contact you about the price draw if you decide to participate.

Your email address is not used as a parameter in the survey. It will never be published and is not used for any other purposes than those stated above. To further ensure that your responses remain anonymous, we remove all email addresses from the response data before further processing.

We do not collect any other identifying information.

How can you exercise your rights to data access, retention, rectification and deletion?

Your personal data will be deleted when this research projects terminates, but at the latest on 31 December 2025. You can make use of your right to view, erase or rectify your personal data at any time by contacting Henning Deters by email (see "Contact").

Consent

By participating in the survey, you consent to the processing of your personal data as described in this privacy statement. You can retract your consent at any time by contacting Henning Deters by email (see "Contact").

Price draw

Due to legal restrictions, respondents based in Italy and Russia are not eligible to participate in the price draw.