Benjamin Raue studied law in Hamburg and Bordeaux (2001 – 2007) with internships in Berlin, Brussels, and Tbilisi.

He acted as a temporary professor at the Chair of Civil Law, Trade, Business & Corporate Law at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (2015 – 2016) after his habilitation at Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel.

Since 2016, Benjamin Raue is a full professor at the University of Trier where he holds the Chair for Civil Law, Law of the Information Society and Intellectual Property. He teaches various courses in civil law, intellectual property law, and IT law and at the German-wide Graduate School “Law of the Information Society”. He is a regular speaker at the Academy of European Law (ERA) as well at conferences about intellectual property law, IT law and data law.

He is member inter alia of the German Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (GRUR), the German Association of IT Law (DGRI) and the Association Internationale pour la Protection de la Propriété Intellectuelle (AIPPI).

Topics that he specialized on include European and German Copyright Law, especially Text and Data Mining, Data Ownership, Freedom of speech on social media platforms, Trademark Law, Unfair Competition Law, IP enforcement and private international law.

Catherine Barnard is Professor of EU law and Employment Law and senior tutor and fellow of Trinity College. She is the author of EU Employment Law (Oxford, OUP, 2012, 5th ed.), The Substantive Law of the EU: The Four Freedoms, (Oxford, OUP, 2016, 5th ed), and (with Peers ed), European Union Law (Oxford, OUP, 2017, 2nd ed). She is currently a Senior Fellow in the UK in a Changing Europe (ukandeu.ac.uk) project. This is an authoritative, non-partisan think tank which does research and provides information about all aspects of Brexit. Part of its remit is to make that information accessible to the general public. So we do a lot of public engagement, especially with the media. She has appeared on the main channels – BBC, ITV, and Sky – as well as some of the more specialized programs such as Law in Action, Woman’s Hour and the Briefing Room. She has also written for the Guardian and the Telegraph. She has given evidence to numerous select committees on the legal issues connected with Brexit, immigration and the European Union (Withdrawal) Act. She has her podcast, 2903cb, and she blogs on Brexit, mainly for the ukandeu.ac.uk.

Eleanor Spaventa is Professor of European Law at Bocconi University, having previously taught at the universities of Durham, Birmingham, and Cambridge. She teaches EU law and several specialist courses. Her main areas of interest are free movement and Union citizenship, Internal Market Law and EU fundamental rights. Since the Brexit referendum she has also been looking at citizens’ rights post-withdrawal, a topic on which she has commissioned two reports by the European Parliament PETI Committee. She is the author of reports on the free movement of workers commissioned by the European Commission.

Flip Schüller is an immigration and asylum lawyer at Prakken d Oliveira specializing in international litigation. In addition to practicing as a lawyer, Flip regularly gives specialist courses to fellow lawyers, both in the Netherlands and internationally. He is a speaker at international conferences and has published articles and explanatory notes in the specialist literature. He’s been a partner since 2003. He is a lawyer since 1992 and his jurisdictions are Human rights, Migration, and Public order. His creed is that „advocacy is the art of making every case special.“

Maciej Szpunar is the First Advocate General at the Court of Justice of the European Union and Professor at the University of Silesia in Katowice (Poland). He obtained his LL.M. from the College of Europe, Bruges. Szpunar is a member of the Research Group on Existing EC Private Law (‘Acquis Group’) and the European Group for Private International Law. He is an associated member of the International Academy of Comparative Law and serves on the Board of Trustees at the ERA in Trier. He is the president of the Polish Association of European Law. Maciej Szpunar was the Undersecretary of State at the Office of the Committee for European Integration (2008 – 09) and in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2010 – 13).

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 racticed 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 concerning merger control, cartel investigations, dominance cases, appeals of European Commission decisions, advisory work and competition compliance. Kiran 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.

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.

Before 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.

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.

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.