Mr. Dr. A.J. (Aart) de Vries (1991) is an associate professor of (European) criminal law at the Willem Pompe Institute and the Utrecht Centre for Regulation and Enforcement in Europe (RENFORCE). In 2024, he obtained his PhD cum laude for his dissertation Evidence and Transnational Punitive Enforcement Proceedings in the European Union (Eleven Publishing 2024). In his dissertation, Aart studies the gathering, sharing, and use of evidence in cross-border criminal and punitive-administrative proceedings in the EU. Starting from a comparative law analysis of the implementation of EU enforcement obligations in the fields of customs, transfrontier waste shipment, and market abuse in the Netherlands, Germany, and France, Aart determines whether and, if so, in what way differences between the enforcement architecture in the Member States and the national and European law rules and standards on the gathering, sharing, and use of evidence in cross-border cases create problems for effective enforcement on the one hand, and the protection of fundamental rights on the other.

Aart's research focuses primarily on the interface between national and EU criminal and administrative (procedural) law, and the interface between criminal and administrative law enforcement, also from a European perspective. Various topics enjoy his special interest, such as judicial cooperation in criminal matters between EU Member States, cross-border use of (unlawfully obtained) evidence, the role of fundamental rights and the EU Charter, including effective legal protection in cross-border cases, and the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO).

Aart gives lectures and seminars in various LLM and bachelor courses. He also supervises students writing their theses in the Utrecht School of Law’s bachelor programme, the master programme in Dutch Criminal Law and the English-language master programme in European Criminal Justice in a Global Context. Since July 2023, he has also been the coordinator of the latter LLM. Besides his PhD thesis, Aart has made several academic contributions (articles, chapters in edited volumes, presentations at conferences) in English and Dutch, and is (or has been) involved in several major research projects.