Vestert Borger is an Assistant Professor of European Law at the Europa Institute of Leiden University.

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Borger obtained his doctorate in January 2018 at Leiden University with distinction (cum laude). In his dissertation, he studies how the currency union could undergo constitutional change during the euro crisis with hardly any formal amendment to the Union Treaties. In 2019, the work was awarded with the dissertation prize of the European Law Faculties Association. In 2020, it was published with Cambridge University Press under the title The Currency of Solidarity: Constitutional Transformation during the Euro Crisis. In 2021, the book was awarded with the Best Book Prize by the University Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES).

Besides his specialisation in the law on the euro, Borger has a keen interest in the institutional and constitutional law of the European Union more generally. He has published in Dutch and international law journals, including SEW, German Law Journal, European Constitutional Law Review, and Common Market Law Review. Borger regularly writes opinion pieces on his research for Dutch newspapers NRC Handelsblad, De Volkskrant and Het Financieele Dagblad.

In the academic year 2019-2020, Vestert Borger was a Niels Stensen Fellow at Yale Law School. As a Niels Stensen Fellow he examined the authority of the European Court of Justice on the basis of a comparison with the constitutional system of the United States.

Since 2022, together with Luuk van Middelaar, Borger has been working on a four-year research project entitled ‘The game of the European constitution: Notes on the Union, and its spokespersons, system and foundation’. This project, funded by a Thorbecke grant of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), examines what the European Union’s nascent capacity for political action teaches about the nature of its constitution. It is expected to result in a book and several public essays. Borger is project leader of this research initiative.

Borger is a book review editor for the European Constitutional Law Review. He instructs courses in European law at bachelor's, master's and advanced master's level. In addition, he supervises bachelor's and master's theses.

Publications