Legal Research Programme 2026
As part of its annual Legal Research Programme (LRP), the ECB is seeking applications to conduct legal research and publish an academic article in areas of interest to the ECB.
What do we offer?
A grant of EUR 5,000, paid upon publication of an article in an internationally renowned, peer-reviewed academic journal, as well as the support of experts from the ECB Legal Services in developing your idea. Our legal experts will support your work through comments on the draft papers as well as virtual and physical discussions. The selected scholars will also be invited to a seminar in Frankfurt to present their research.
What are we looking for?
Proposals from established scholars and early-career researchers, addressing one of the specific topics presented below. Alternatively, scholars may submit a clearly structured own-initiative proposal. We are particularly interested in topical, innovative, and cross-disciplinary submissions that examine aspects not yet adequately explored by legal academia. Further details on the content and form of the proposal are given below.
Call for papers
Application deadline: 22:00 CET on 18 January 2026
Topic-specific proposals
1. Artificial intelligence and ECB decision-making: legal challenges and constraints
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly reshaping research, data analysis, and the decision-making of public institutions, including central banks. The ECB is already using smart and AI-based tools in areas such as statistics, economic analysis, and communication. What are the legal challenges in using AI tools to support the ECB’s decision-making across its various areas of competence? Such support, understood to encompass any input underlying final decisions, may arise in key areas of the ECB’s mandate, such as monetary policy and banking supervision, but may also extend to other fields, including human-resources processes (for example, the pre-selection of candidates in recruitment procedures).
Researchers are invited to assess the potential uses of AI in the ECB’s decision-making processes and the legal boundaries stemming from the EU’s constitutional law and administrative law principles if the ECB bases its decisions on data supplied by AI tools and/or integrates AI into its decision-making processes when carrying out its tasks. Researchers are encouraged to approach the topic with particular focus on principles such as good administration, the duty to give reasons, and transparency. Papers could also discuss the interaction between the ECB’s discretion and the use of AI, and whether reliance on AI could lead to an abuse or misuse of discretion. Any potential links between the use of AI and the principle of central bank independence could also be investigated. Researchers may further explore whether analogies can be drawn from the rules governing the delegation of decision-making powers, given that questions already discussed in the delegation context – such as liability and ultimate responsibility – may equally arise when considering the use of AI.
2. Foreign stablecoins under EU law: risks and regulatory responses
The ongoing quest for novel cross-border payment solutions has seen payment stablecoins emerge as a response to market fragmentation and processing inefficiencies. The recent adoption of stablecoin-specific regulatory regimes – such as MiCAR in the EU and the GENIUS Act in the United States – not only lends legal legitimacy to these instruments but may also facilitate their use across multiple jurisdictions. This development could reinforce their global footprint while simultaneously amplifying the various risks associated with their cross-border circulation.
Researchers are encouraged to explore the regulatory framework and potential implications of payment stablecoins in the EU and the US, considering aspects such as the internal market, financial stability, monetary policy transmission, monetary sovereignty, and the efficient functioning of payment systems.
The research could first compare how MiCAR and the GENIUS Act approach the question of market entry for foreign-issued payment stablecoins, including distinctions based on the currency of denomination. Second, it may assess the risks that could arise from the penetration of the EU market by US-issued, GENIUS Act-compliant payment stablecoins, and explore the range of possible mitigation measures, such as equivalence regimes, market-access conditions, supervisory cooperation arrangements, or regulatory adjustments (including, where relevant, in the context of a future MiCAR review). Finally, papers may analyse the question of fungibility between payment stablecoins issued in parallel by the same issuer (or a wholly owned subsidiary) in the US and the EU, particularly where such instruments are marketed as redeemable in either jurisdiction at the holder’s election.
3. Sustainable finance, simplification, and competitiveness: squaring the circle
Over the past decade, the EU has adopted a wide range of sustainable-finance legislation. However, in view of recent geopolitical and economic developments, the ambition and scope of this legislation is being revisited. Building on the Letta and Draghi reports, the Commission’s Communication on a Competitiveness Compass for the EU, published in January 2025, sets out a roadmap to support European innovation, decarbonisation and economic security. That roadmap includes measures aimed at simplifying the regulatory environment for companies. In particular, the Commission has already proposed to streamline corporate sustainability reporting and due-diligence legislation.
These developments raise questions regarding the interaction of these changes with the EU’s and its Member States’ obligations under human rights law. Researchers are invited to explore how ongoing or proposed simplification efforts intersect with human-rights-based constraints and principles.
The research could examine how the principle of non-regression in human rights law may be relevant in the context of measures to mitigate and adapt to climate change, and whether this principle could support or constrain the EU’s competitiveness agenda. It may further analyse the legal consequences that human rights law could have for the EU’s simplification initiatives, especially in light of recent rulings of European and international courts and tribunals. Finally, such research could assess the implications these developments may have for European and national institutions when applying EU and national law within the evolving framework of sustainable finance, competitiveness and human rights obligations.
4. Financial data sharing in the EU: a critical analysis
Central banks and supervisory authorities have increasingly come to rely on the collection of large volumes of high-quality, granular financial data for evidence-based policy and decision-making. At the same time, it is a political priority of the Union to reduce regulatory burdens for businesses and to rationalise reporting obligations in order to increase competitiveness. Confidentiality and the need to protect sensitive data add an additional layer to the equation of financial data sharing.
The aim of the legal research paper would be to investigate how the current legal frameworks balance these considerations and to contribute to the discussion on better financial data sharing in the EU.
The paper would start with comparing approaches in the different legal regimes governing the collection and sharing of financial data among central banks and supervisory authorities in the EU. Examples include the legal regimes governing the collection and sharing of: (i) statistical information by the European Statistical System and the ESCB, including the recent and ongoing reforms of Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 and Council Regulation (EC) No 2533/98; (ii) data reported and disclosed by financial institutions and undertakings to supervisory authorities, including the reforms introduced by Regulation (EU) 2025/2088; and (iii) other regulatory reporting, for example under EMIR, SFTR, MiFID, the Money Market Funds Regulation, etc.
What are the main differences in the regimes governing the sharing of different sources of financial data in the Union, and to what extent are these differences justified? How do these regimes balance the need for enhanced data sharing and the objective of regulatory simplification with the protection of confidentiality, the obligation of professional secrecy, the management of data quality, or data “sovereignty”? How are the rights and interests of data subjects and private data holders protected when confidential information is shared? Moreover, does the effective mitigation of legal risks align with the objective of regulatory simplification? Are there any common general principles governing the applicable legal regimes?
5. Ancillary provisions in individual administrative decisions: concept, limits, and review
The use of ancillary provisions in individual administrative decisions is well known in the administrative-law traditions of several national legal systems, as well as in the practice and regulation of certain fields of EU administrative law.
Broadly conceived as non-essential elements of the administrative act – containing prescriptions or limitations that qualify its essential content – ancillary provisions introduce flexibility and proportionality into administrative action. They can be used to structure the act more effectively and to secure, facilitate, or restrict its implementation.
Researchers are invited to assess the notion, classification, and use of ancillary provisions in individual administrative decisions under EU law and EU case law, with a specific focus on ECB decisions adopted in the exercise of supervisory tasks. The research could examine how ancillary provisions are conceptualised in EU administrative law, their legal effects, and the consequences of their non-fulfilment. They may also analyse the ways in which such provisions can be enforced and the forms of judicial challenge available before the EU courts.
Researchers are encouraged to approach this topic from an EU administrative-law perspective, while drawing, where relevant, on comparative insights from national administrative traditions.
6. Professional secrecy in the ECB: unpacking Article 37 ESCB/ECB Statute
Confidentiality is an important element that ensures trust of data subjects in public institutions, and in particular central banks such as the ECB. For this reason, clarity on the ECB’s powers and duties in respect of the protection of confidential information is essential.
Article 37 of the ESCB/ECB Statute holds a central position in the confidentiality framework applicable to the ECB. It contains an obligation of professional secrecy for members of the governing bodies and the staff of the ECB and the national central banks. Additionally, this provision establishes that persons having access to data covered by Union legislation imposing an obligation of secrecy shall be subject to such legislation.
The paper should provide a thorough analysis of this provision and its role in shaping the confidentiality framework which is applicable to the ECB, linking it with Article 339 TFEU and sector-specific confidentiality rules.
It should also reflect on the potential use of this provision to further develop the confidentiality framework of the ECB.
Regarding the first subparagraph of Article 37, the paper should investigate whether the ECB is entitled to further define the concept of “professional secrecy” and the limits placed on such option by primary law as well as in light of other legal frameworks currently applicable to the ECB.
Concerning the second subparagraph of Article 37, the paper should first investigate its scope and then address the question whether the ECB is entitled (or even required) to impose confidentiality safeguards upon third parties receiving ECB information, and what the practical implications of such obligations on third parties would be. In other words, the paper should assess whether the second subparagraph of Article 37, as a primary-law provision, could serve as a legal basis – in combination with other provisions in Union legislation containing obligations of professional secrecy – to impose such obligations on third parties.
7. Overinclusion and gaps: how may the ECB as supervisor react?
In applying the supervisory framework the ECB is from time to time confronted with situations of overinclusion (i.e. a situation in which a supervisory rule includes cases which from the supervisory perspective should not be included, e.g. including certain transactions in a certain risk category although in light of the specific situation of the product this categorisation is not appropriate)) and gaps (a provision applies according to its wording to a specific situation but not to a situation that from a supervisory perspective is comparable). So what can a supervisor do and what are the limits to the action to be taken into account?
Own-initiative proposals
In addition to the topics listed above, the ECB warmly invites scholars to submit own-initiative proposals for legal research papers that address themes of relevance to the ECB’s mandate and the evolving legal framework of the European Union with regard to central banking. Proposals may explore any area of law that bears on the tasks, institutional position, or decision-making of the ECB, adopting approaches from EU administrative law, constitutional law, international law, financial regulation, monetary law, or central banking governance.
We particularly welcome proposals that engage with topical questions arising from current legal, economic, or geopolitical developments affecting the ECB and the EMU. Submissions adopting innovative perspectives, including those that draw on comparative or cross-disciplinary approaches (for example, law and economics, law and technology, or insights from political science), are strongly encouraged. Research addressing emerging challenges – whether institutional, regulatory, procedural, or linked to technological transformation – will be viewed favourably.
Submit an own-initiative proposalApplications
Applications should be submitted via the link indicated above for the relevant research topic no later than 22:00 (CET) on 18 January 2026. The ECB aims to assign at least one third of the grants to Junior Scholars (i.e. scholars who are doctoral candidates or obtained their doctoral degree no earlier than 1 January 2022). The ECB particularly encourages applications from female scholars.
The ECB may decide not to select any application for a given research topic if, in its opinion, no application of sufficient quality has been submitted for that topic. All applications will be assessed by a committee composed of members of the ECB’s Legal Services.
Applications must include:
- the applicant’s curriculum vitae;
- in the case of Junior Scholars: an official statement confirming the doctoral candidate status of the applicant or the date on which the doctoral degree was obtained;
- a proposal falling under one of the research topics mentioned above. Such proposal should be no longer than 1,500 words (not including charts, graphs, or bibliography) and contain:
- a statement of the issues to be addressed (research questions/hypotheses). This part should not simply replicate the original call but focus on the specific legal problems pointing to the way they can be addressed;
- a discussion of the state of the art;
- an analysis of the originality and significance of the proposed research paper in view of state of the art;
- any methodological issues, if different from typical doctrinal legal methods (optional).
General information
The European Central Bank (ECB) launched the Legal Research Programme (LRP) in 2008 to strengthen connections between the ECB and academia and to advance legal research in areas related to central banking. The LRP rests on the premise that closer engagement between academia and the practice of EU institutions is mutually beneficial. Over the years, the LRP has supported research in a wide range of areas and has become a focal point within the community working on the law of central banking.
Eligibility
Candidates should be PhD candidate, or already hold a PhD and a position in a research institution. They cannot be in an employment relationship with the ECB.
Process and deliverable
The selected scholars are required to write an academic article on one of the research topics included in the call for papers. The selected scholars will be invited to a seminar at the ECB to present their proposal against the background of their previous research in the relevant field. This seminar is intended to provide scholars with constructive feedback on their research from ECB experts. The scholars must submit a first draft of the research paper by 30 May 2026. ECB experts will provide feedback on this draft. The scholars will take this feedback into account and be prepared to present the full draft paper in September 2026. Scholars are expected to finalise the paper and submit it to an academic journal by November 2026. The article must be accepted for publication in an internationally renowned, peer-reviewed academic journal.
Grant
The ECB will provide a grant of EUR 5,000, which is not compatible with any other fellowships or grants received from third parties in relation to the same research project, unless the ECB expressly consents to this.
In case of questions, please address your query to: LegalServices@ecb.europa.eu.