Born 1954; lic. iuris, Ph.D. in Law (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven); Master of Laws, Master in Public Administration (Harvard University); Lecturer (1979-83), subsequently Professor of European Law, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (since 1983); Legal Secretary at the Court of Justice (1984-85); Professor at the College of Europe, Bruges (1984-89); member of the Brussels Bar (1986-89); Visiting Professor at the Harvard Law School (1989); Judge at the Court of First Instance of the European Communities from 25 September 1989 to 6 October 2003; Judge at the Court of Justice since 7 October 2003; Vice-President of the Court of Justice from 9 October 2012 to 8 October 2015; President of the Court of Justice since 8 October 2015.

Professor Philippe De Bruycker is a lawyer specialised in European Immigration and Asylum Law, Free movement of European citizens and comparative aliens law. He is teaching and researching in those fields at the Institute for European Studies of the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. He coordinates the Odysseus Academic Network for Legal Studies on Immigration and Asylum in Europe which he founded in 1999. He is also Jean Monnet Chair for European Law on Immigration & Asylum.

From 2001 till 2003, he was principal adviser at the European Commission in the DG Home Affairs in charge of drafting proposals for directives on immigration. He also works as an expert and trainer for different institutions (European Parliament, UNHCR, IOM, ICMPD,…) and is at the origin of the European Asylum Curriculum (EAC) used by the EU to train asylum case officers. After having published extensively on issues of constitutional and administrative law as Head of the Centre for Public Law in ULB till 1999, his several books and articles now focus on Immigration and Asylum Law with a special emphasis on its EU dimension.

His most recent and important publications include:

• Immigration and Asylum Law of the EU : Current Debates/ Actualité du Droit européen de l’immigration et de l’asile, under the supervision of/sous la direction de Jean-Yves CARLIER and/et Philippe DE BRUYCKER (Bruylant 2005).
• The Emergence of a European Asylum Policy/L’émergence d’une politique européenne d’asile, Brussels, Edts Bruylant, 2004.
• The Emergence of a European Immigration Policy/L’émergence d’une politique européenne d’immigration, Brussels, Edts Bruylant, 2003.
• Les régularisations des étrangers illégaux dans l’Union européenne/ Regularisations of Illegal immigrants in the European Union, édts Bruylant, Brussels, 2000.
• « Le sort du troisième pilier de l’Union européenne : asile, immigration, contrôle des frontières, lutte contre la criminalité, collaboration policière et judiciaire », Union européenne : quels défis pour l’an 2000 ?, F. DEHOUSSE, J. VAN DAMME, et L. LE HARDY DE BEAULIEU, Bruxelles, Presses interuniversitaires européennes, 1998, p. 85.
• « D’un système européen d’asile vers un droit européen des réfugiés », Europe and refugees : a challenge ?, J-Y. CARLIER et D. VANHEULE (éd.), Kluwer, 1997, p. 159.
• « L’impact du droit européen sur la loi du 15 décembre 1980 », Revue du droit des étrangers, 1996, p. 703

Kiran Desai is a partner at the EY Law firm in Belgium (HVG Avocats) and the EU Competition Law Leader. He is based in Brussels. He has over 25 years’ experience, having first qualified and practiced law in London before moving to Brussels.  Kiran was a founding member of the EU Committee of the Law Society of England & Wales, a Board member and Vice-Chair of the American Chamber of Commerce to the EU and is currently a member of the Advisory Committee on BREXIT to the Brussels office of the Law Society.

In relation to Competition Law, Kiran has significant experience acting for corporations in relation to merger control, cartel investigations, dominance cases, appeals of European Commission decisions, advisory work and competition compliance.  He represent clients in many sectors but in particular Automotive, Chemicals, Life Sciences, Logistics, Media, Technology and Telecommunications. In relation to EU Law, he has advised corporations with the view to influencing EU policy and proposed legislation in relation to Audit, Chemicals, Coal, Electricity, Emissions Standards, the Internet, Payment Systems, Retail, Telecommunications, and Tobacco.

Kiran has a strong interest in the interplay between economics and law, and has lectured on competition law and compliance in various countries including India. He is a standing contributor to the journal European Competition and Regulatory Law Review.

Maria Caterina Baruffi is Full Professor of International Law at the University of Verona and Deputy Head of the Law Department. She is charged with the courses of EU Law, Advanced EU Law (EU private international law in family matters), and Advanced International Law (international human rights’ protection).

Private and procedural international law in family matters is among her major areas of research, particularly with regard to the topics of children protection, cross-border recognition of personal status and international surrogacy.

She has developed a solid expertise as speaker in conferences, training courses and seminars addressed to legal practitioners and members of the judiciary at both Italian and European levels.
In April 2015 she was appointed by the European Commission as member of the Group of Experts on the review of Brussels IIa (Regulation 2201/2003) and, since September 2016, she is member of the Expert Group on International Surrogacy Agreements appointed by ISS (International Social Service).

She is committed in several projects regarding EU family law co-funded by the European Commission under the Justice Programme 2014-2020 (in one of them acting in the role of Coordinator).
Since 1996 she is lawyer of the Bar of Milan.

Dr. Joni Heliskoski, LL.M. (Helsinki), PhD (Cantab), is the Director of EU Litigation at the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Finland, and the Agent of the Government of Finland before the Court of Justice of the EU. Before joining the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in 2007 he worked at the Permanent Representation of Finland to the EU, the Ministry of Justice and the Prime Minister’s Office. He is also Adjunct Professor of International Law at the University of Helsinki. He has published widely on the external relations law of the European Union, including on mixed agreements.

Marie-Christine Janssens studied law and history of arts at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven). After practicing law at the Brussels bar (1981-1989), and doing an internship at a Washington DC based law firm (1985-1986), she completed her PhD in intellectual property as researcher at the KU Leuven under the supervision of Frank Gotzen (1996).

She is full professor at the KU Leuven where she teaches various courses in the sector of intellectual property rights at graduate and postgraduate level, including specialization courses in copyright and trademark law.

She is Head of Unit of the KU Leuven Centre for IT & IP Law (CiTiP), with a team of over 40 researchers specialized in legal and ethical aspects of IT innovation and intellectual property.  CiTiP has a solid track record as partner of various interdisciplinary research projects, including 25 FP 7 projects, more than 10 H2020 projects and many other nationally funded projects.

Since 2007, she is President of the Belgian Council for Intellectual Property Rights, section Copyright and Neighbouring Rights (Ministry of Economic Affairs) and vice-president of the Belgian group of ALAI. She is also a member of the European Copyright Society, vice-president of the Belgian group of ALAI and member of other IP associations (ATRIP, AIPPI, BMM). She is member of the board of editors of leading Belgian IP journals, including IRDI en DAOR

Topics that she specialized on include European Trademark Law, Harmonisation of copyright norms in the EU, Exceptions to copyright, Moral rights, hyperlinking, Text and Data mining, Open access, Orphan works, Software protection, Open Source, Data ownership, Employee inventions, Inventions at universities, IP enforcement and private international law.

For more details on her cv and publications, see  www.law.kuleuven.be/citip

 

Professor Takis Tridimas has the Chair of European Law at the Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London and is Director of the Centre of European Law. He is also the Nancy A. Patterson Distinguished Faculty Scholar and Professor at Pennsylvania State University and a Barrister in Matrix Chambers.

Doc. JUDr. Pavel Svoboda, Ph.D., D.E.A was born in 1962 in Prague. Graduated in law at the Charles University, Prague and in European law at the University of Social Sciences, Toulouse. Comes from an academic background; as a Professor of European law at the Law Faculty of Charles University in Prague. His former experience includes attorney of law, deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador of the Czech Republic to the Council of Europe and Minister and Chairman of the Legislative Council of the Czech Republic. He also served as visiting Professor at the University of Social Sciences in Toulouse.

Emil Ruffer has been the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of the Czech Republic to the Council of Europe since 2016.

Prior to this, he was Deputy Director (2007-2008) and then Director (2008-2016) of the EU law Department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic. Among other diplomatic posts, he was Third Secretary at the Czech Embassy in London during the United Kingdom Presidency of the Council of the EU. He has carried out functions in Berlin and London during his time at the Diplomatic Academy of the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

He graduated from the Law Faculty of the Charles University in Prague (Ph.D. degree in European Law in 2007), studied at the Cardiff Law School (Wales) and Law Faculty of the Humboldt University in Berlin and holds a diploma in English and European Law from the University of Cambridge. He was a Visiting Fulbright Scholar at Fordham Law School, New York in 2011.

JUDr. Martin Smolek, Ph.D., LL.M. acts as Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. He heads the Legal and Consular Section since June 2015. In 2008 has been appointed Agent of the Czech Republic before the Court of the European Union.