The Eui Has An Open Vacancy for A

**The EUI has an open vacancy for a**

**Research Assistant in the**

**Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies**

**Florence, 14 May 2025**

**Reference: V/RA/RSC/14/2025**

**Who we are**

The **European University Institute (EUI)** at a glance:

- an international organisation set up in 1972;
- a research university focusing exclusively on postgraduate, doctoral and post-doctoral studies, and

advanced research;
- located in the hills overlooking the city of Florence, Italy.

The Institute also hosts the Historical Archives of the European Union.

The **Robert Schuman Centre for Advances Studies (RSCAS)** is an inter-disciplinary research centre at the

heart of the European University Institute (EUI). It was established in 1992 to complement the four EUI

disciplinary departments (Economics, History and Civilization, Law, Political and Social Sciences) with the aim

of being involved in both basic and policy research, collaborate with other centres of excellence in Europe,

provide opportunities for young scholars and promote dialogue with the world of practice. The Centre’s goal is

to maintain an environment and support structure that fosters intellectual curiosity and excellent research. The

research agenda of the Centre is currently guided by three major themes: Integration, Governance and

Democracy; Regulating Markets and Governing Money; and 21st Century World Politics and Europe.

The Research Fellow will be based at the **Centre for Judicial Cooperation** headed by Professor Deirdre
Curtin since January 2016. Since its set up, in December 2011, the Centre has developed a wide network of
judges, lawyers and scholars, for the purpose of establishing a space for collaboration and exchange of
knowledge between legal practitioners and the academic community on topics related to judicial interaction
across various areas of law. Through its activities and expertise, the Centre engages with both practitioners and
academics on various activities ranging from workshops and conferences to pure research and policy
endeavours. In order to disseminate the results of its work, the Centre publishes open access papers, such as
handbooks, reports, and ‘distinguished Lecture’ papers addressing the judicial and academic communities.

**Employment details**

**Contract type**Part-time 13% (4/30, 5 hours and 20 minutes/week)

**Length of contract**4 months, start date 01/09/2025 (exact starting date to be confirmed)

**Salary indication and**Grade: ASTAC1b step 1
**grade**

The basic net monthly salary after taxes is approximately 590 Euro, plus allowances
if applicable.

More information about conditions of employment is available here.**

**Place of work**To be agreed with Project Director (salary simulation based on place of work
Florence, Italy)

**About the project**

**Project Director**Prof. Deirdre Curtin

**Project details**POLINE (Principles Of Law In National and European VAT) aims at developing an

AI-powered pilot tool for the retrieval and analysis of judicial principles of law in the
CJEU and national case-law in Value Added Tax (VAT). The tool relies on AI
techniques for extracting, clustering and linking judicial principles of law and is
embedded in a modular platform, consisting of a Legal Database, Link Visualization
and Customised Detection Module. It covers the case-law of the CJEU and the
Italian, Swedish and Bulgarian Supreme Courts and will be accessible to judges,
other legal practitioners, tax policymakers and taxpayers.

The development of the tool will be based on a multidisciplinary approach
combining theory and practice of judicial decision-making for the study of the
concept of “judicial principle of law” and the analysis of the caselaw; legal
informatics methods for the creation of an ontology of judicial concepts in VAT and
training datasets of manually annotated judicial principles of law; AI, machine
learning, and NLP techniques for the automatic extraction of principles, the
detection of textual and semantic similarity, and network analysis.

The tool will be trialed in 3 online national testing events and disseminated in 3
national demonstration events and 1 final international conference. The pilot tool
provides a robust and trustworthy use case of AI technologies for justice. It will
provide non-discriminatory and effective access to justice. Through its collection of
principles of law and NLP-powered search engine, the tool will assist judges in
accessing legal knowledge by reducing their work overload. Moreover, through the
Customised Detection Test Module, the tool will allow recipients of VAT measures
to identify judicial principles of law applied in a specific case and assess whether
VAT law is correctly applied. By developing open-access automated techniques of
knowledge extraction, the methods developed can be easily reused and expanded
to include other fields of law and other legal systems.

**Job description**The Research Assistant will provide research assistance