Dr. Juha Raitio is Professor of European Law at the University of Helsinki (since 2007) and docent (associate professor) in European law at the Universities of Lapland, Tampere and Turku. He has written various books and articles in the field of European law and legal theory.
His theoretical works revolve around the concepts of legal certainty and rule of law (e.g. Principle of Legal Certainty in EC Law, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003). Currently, his main research interests relate to the Internal Market Law as well as EU Constitutional Law. He is president of the Finnish European Law Association (FIDE) and member of the steering group in the Nordic Network for European Legal Studies.
Allan Rosas is a Doctor of Law from the University of Turku (1977), Doctor of Law honoris causa from the same University and of l’université de Neuchâtel and Doctor of Political Science honoris causa of the Åbo Akademi University. He is President of the EU 255 Panel and Member of the Independent Ethical Committee of the European Commission, Visiting Professor at the College of Europe and Docent (Associate Professor) at the University of Helsinki. He was Professor of Public Law at the University of Turku (1976-1981) and Armfelt Professor of Law at the Åbo Akademi University (1981-1995) and Director of its Institute for Human Rights (1985-1995). From 1995 to 2002 he was Principal Legal Adviser and later Deputy Director-General of the Legal Service of the European Commission and from 2002 to 2019 Judge at the European Court of Justice. He has more than 400 publications in the areas of EU law, international law, constitutional law and administrative law. His most recent book is A Rosas and L Armati, EU Constitutional Law: An Introduction, 3rd rev edn (Oxford, Hart Publishing, 2018).
Pekka Pohjankoski is Researcher at the Faculty of Law at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School (Cambridge, USA), the University of Helsinki, and has also studied at the Sorbonne Law School (Paris, France). Prior to joining the Faculty of Law, he worked as Legal Secretary (référendaire) at the Court of Justice of the European Union and as Legal Officer at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland. He has completed his court training on the bench at the Helsinki District Court and is Attorney and Counselor at Law of the New York State Bar (USA). His current research focuses on EU constitutional law, legal history, as well as private international law.
Tiina Astola served as Director-General, Directorate-General Justice and Consumers from 2016 to 2020. The DG deals with civil justice, including contract and company law, criminal justice, fundamental rights, data protection and free movement, equality and consumer law and policy. Before joining the Commission, Ms Astola was Permanent Secretary of the Finnish Ministry of Justice, with overall responsibility for both international and domestic law matters, including courts and prisons. Prior to that, she headed units responsible for civil law and European law at the Department of Legislation of the Ministry and has also worked for the Finnish Ministry of Finance and the Finnish Foreign Trade Association. Ms. Astola has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the Faculty of Law of the University of Helsinki in May 2017.
Geert de Baere is Judge at the General Court of the European Union.
Born 1979; lic. iuris (University of Antwerp, 2002); LL.M. (2003) and PhD (2007) (King’s College, University of Cambridge); Visiting Research Fellow at Columbia Law School (2005); Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Antwerp (2007-09); Visiting Professor (2009), subsequently Assistant Professor (2010-14) and Associate Professor (from 2015) in EU law and international law at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven); Legal Secretary at the Court of Justice of the European Union in the chambers of Advocate General Sharpston (2007-09), subsequently of Judge Prechal (2016-17); Judge at the General Court since 4 October 2017.
Leonard Besselink holds the chair of Constitutional Law in the Faculty of Law of the University of Amsterdam since 2012 and is affilliated to the Amsterdam Centre for European Law and Governance, ACELG. Prior to that he held the chair of European Constitutional Law at the University of Utrecht. He was Henri G. Schermers Fellow of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies (2011-2012), the Royal Committee on the Constitution (2009-2010) and is a member of the Royal Netherlands Society of Sciences and Humanities.
He studied at various universities, among which the University of Leiden, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the European University Institute where he obtained a doctorate in social and political sciences.
His research focuses on issues of European, comparative and national constitutional law. In particular the constitutional nexus between EU and national constitutional law is one of his main research themes as well as issues of fundamental rights protection in Europe.
Steven Blockmans is Director of Research at CEPS. He is also a Professor of EU External Relations Law and Governance at the University of Amsterdam and editor-in-chief of the European Foreign Affairs Review. He is a frequent commentator on EU affairs at major media outlets and regularly briefs senior policy practitioners from the European Union, its member states and G20 country governments. Steven has testified at the foreign affairs and international trade committees of the European Parliament and the UK House of Commons. He was also a member of a track 1,5 process between the EU and Russia and track 2 processes between the EU and India, Mexico and the UK.
He is the author of Tough Love: the EU’s relations with the Western Balkans (Asser Press 2007) and The Obsolescence of the European Neighbourhood Policy (Rowman & Littlefield 2017) and has (co-)edited 20 volumes, including The EU’s Role in Global Governance (Oxford University Press 2013), The EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (Edward Elgar 2018) and a trilogy on Democracy in the EU (Rowman & Littlefield 2020). Steven served as rapporteur of high-level task forces on European Defence Union (chaired by Javier Solana, 2015), EU Institutional Reform (chaired by Danuta Hübner, 2017) and the European External Action Service (chaired by Pierre Vimont, 2021).
For more than 20 years he has combined his academic work with contract research carried out for EU and national donors, consultancy activities and training for professionals. He has advised governments of third countries on their relations with the EU and worked on numerous technical assistance projects in wider Europe and Asia. Before joining CEPS in 2012, Steven was Head of Research at the Asser Institute, an international law centre based in The Hague. From 2010 to 2014, he was a special visiting professor at the Law Faculty of University of Leuven. From 2007 to 2009 he served as a long-term expert on legal approximation in the framework of an EU-sponsored project in support for the Ministry of European Integration of Albania.
Carlos Closa Montero is Professor at the IPP-CSIC and the School of Transnational Governance (STG) at the European University Institute (EUI), Florence and co-editor of the European Political Science Review (EPSR) (ECPR). He acted as Deputy Director at the Centre for Political and Constitutional Studies (CEPC), Presidency Ministry (Madrid) and member of the Venice Commission for Democracy through Law of the Council of Europe. He has been Jean Monnet Fellow at the EUI, Florence, Visiting Fellow at the Centre for European Studies (Harvard University), Visiting Professor at the College of Europe (Bruges) and Emile Nöel Fellow at the Jean Monnet Centre, NYU and Visiting Professor in several universities.
Paul Craig was educated at Worcester College, Oxford, where he subsequently became a Fellow and Tutor in law in 1976. He was appointed to a Readership in 1990, and then became an ad hominem Professor in 1996. He was appointed to an established chair in 1998, the Professorship in English law, which is held at St John's College Oxford. He was made an Honorary QC in 2000, and an Honorary Bencher of Gray's Inn in the same year. He has lectured at many other institutions across the world, including in North America, Europe, China and Australia. He is editor of the Clarendon Law series, co-editor of a monograph series on EU law in Context, and is on the editorial board of various law journals. He was a delegate of Oxford University Press from 2009-2019, and was the UK Alternate Member of the Venice Commission on Law and Democracy from 2010-2018. His research interests include Constitutional Law, Administrative Law, Comparative Public Law and EU Law, and he has published widely in these areas.
Inge Govaere is Professor of EU Law, Director of the Ghent European Law Institute (G.E.L.I.) and Director of the LLMs at Ghent University. She is also the Director of the European Legal Studies Department at the College of Europe in Bruges.
She obtained her PhD at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence (Italy). Inge Govaere was Fulbright Scholar in Residence at Cornell University (Ithaca NY, USA) and has been a visiting professor or given conferences and guest lectures at many universities worldwide, inter alia Columbia University (N.Y., USA), Yale University (C.T., USA), Curtin University (Perth, Australia), University of Sao Paolo (Brazil), Université Panthéon-Assas (Paris II, France), Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition (Munich, Germany), the European University Institute (EUI) (Firenze, Italy), and Cambridge University (UK).
Her academic interests vary from EU external relations law to Internal Market and EU intellectual property rights. Her latest (co-edited) books are “The Division of Competences between the European Union and its Member States: Reflections on the Past, Present and Future”, Hart Publishing (2017, paperback 2020); “The EU Better Regulation Agenda”, Hart Publishing (2018, paperback 2020); “The Interface Between EU and International Law: Contemporary Reflections”, Hart Publishing (2019); “Critical Reflections on Constitutional Democracy in the European Union”, Hart Publishing (2019); “EU External Relations Post-Lisbon: The Law and Practice of Facultative Mixity”, Brill (2020); “Internal Market 2.0”, Hart Publishing (2020). Inge Govaere is a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (KVAB).
Xavier Groussot is professor of EU law at Lund University (Sweden). He is also visiting professor at University Panthéon Assas (Paris II) where he teaches EU free movement law at the European College of Paris since 2009. His main fields of interests lie in EU constitutional law, internal market law, EU procedural law and legal theory. He has published extensively at international level in renown publishing house. He is member of the Nils Klim prize committee (Holberg foundation) and of the Good Lobby Profs initiative. He was pro-Dean of the Lund University Faculty of Law (2015- 2021).
Daniel Halberstam is the Eric Stein Collegiate Professor of Law, and Director of European Legal Studies, at the University of Michigan Law School. He served as Associate Dean for Faculty & Research from 2016-2020. An expert on European Union law, constitutional law, and federalism, and one of the principal architects of the theory of constitutional pluralism, Professor Halberstam writes more broadly on comparative public law and legal theory.
Halberstam was Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg, Berlin, served for a decade as external professor in the European Legal Studies Department at the College of Europe, Bruges, gave the General Course on the EU at the European University Institute, Florence, and was a member of the plaintiff’s legal team in the Brexit litigation before the UK Supreme Court. He earned his BA summa cum laude in mathematics from Columbia University, and a JD from Yale Law School. Before joining the Michigan faculty in 1999, he served as clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter, judicial fellow for Judge Peter Jann at the European Court of Justice, and in the Clinton Administration’s Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel
Prof. Armin Hatje has been the European Co-Dean of the China-EU School of Law at the China University of Political Science and Law since 2014. He is also a Professor for Public Law and European Law and Managing Director of the Department of European Union Law at the University of Hamburg, Germany, which he joined in 2006. Previously, he was a Full Professor of Law at the University of Bielefeld, Germany, from 1997 to 2006. His main research interests focuses on European law and its interplay with national constitutional law and administrative law. He is president of the German Society of European Law and editor of the "Europarecht" ("European Law") and the "EU-Commentary" journal. Armin Hatje and Peter-Christian Müller-Graff are editors of the "Enzyklopädie des Europarechts" ("Encyclopaedia of European Law"). He has taught the "Legal Foundations of EU Law" course for many years at the China- EU School of Law.
Joni Heliskoski is Justice at the Supreme Administrative Court of Finland.
Born 1972. Master of Laws (University of Helsinki, 1996)
Doctor of Philosophy (law) (University of Cambridge, England, 2000)
Trained on the bench (District Court of Helsinki, 2002)
Secretary of Legislation at the Ministry of Justice (2000-2001, temporary)
Notary at the District Court of Helsinki (2001-2002)
Counsellor of Legislation at the Ministry of Justice (2002-2003, temporary, 2003-2007, permanent, partially on a leave of absence)
Ministerial Adviser at the Prime Minister’s Office (2003, temporary)
Senior Specialist at the Permanent Representation of Finland to the European Union (2006-2007)Director of EU Litigation and Agent of the Government of Finland before the Court of Justice of the European Union (2007-2008, temporary)
Deputy Director of EU Litigation and Deputy Agent of the Government of Finland before the Court of Justice of the European Union (2008-2010)
Director of EU Litigation and Agent of the Government of Finland before the Court of Justice of the European Union (2011-2019), Justice of the Supreme Administrative Court (acting member January-July 2020, permanent August 2020-)
Adjunct Professor of International Law at the University of Helsinki (2002-)
Chairman of the ad hoc working party of the Council of the European Union on fundamental rights and citizenship (2006)
Chairman of the working party of the Council of the European Union on the Court of Justice (2019), Writings in the field of EU law
Päivi Hirvelä is Justice at the Supreme Court of Finland.
Born 1954; Master of Laws 1980, Master of Laws with Court Training 1981. Licenciate of Laws 1997 and Doctor of Laws 2007.
Research Assistant at the Institute of Criminal and Legal Policy in 1980. Acting Public Defender in Sodankylä, 1981-1982, and acting Public Defender in Lahti in 1982. Referendary at the Kouvola Court of Appeals, acting Judge of the City Court in Kouvola and acting Kouvola District Court Judge at different times, 1982-1995. District Prosecutor in Lahti, 1986-1998. State Prosecutor, 1999-2015. Judge at the European Court of Human Rights, 2007-2015, during which time Vice-President of the Chamber, 2013-2015. Justice of the Supreme Court of Finland since 2016.
Researcher at the University of Helsinki 1996-1997, and acting Assistant for Criminal and Procedural Law 1997. Ancillary Referendary to the Parliamentary Ombudsman 1998-1999, Lawyer for the Secretariat at the European Court of Human Rights in 2001. Adjunct Professor of Procedural Law and Human Rights Research at the University of Lapland, 2014, and Adjunct Professor of Criminal Procedure at the University of Helsinki, 2015. Member in numerous state bodies and working groups, 1999-2006. Teaching and published works focused on Procedural Law in particular. Co-author of ‘Ihmisoikeudet – käsikirja EIT:n oikeuskäytäntöön’.
Niilo Jääskinen is Judge at the Court of Justice of the European Union.
Born 1958; law degree (1980), postgraduate law degree (1982), doctorate at the University of Helsinki, Finland (2008); Lecturer at the University of Helsinki (1980-1986); Legal Secretary and acting Judge at the District Court, Rovaniemi, Finland (1983-1984); Legal Adviser (1987-1989), and subsequently head of the European Law Section (1990-1995), at the Ministry of Justice, Finland; Legal Adviser at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Finland (1989-1990); Adviser, and Clerk for European affairs, of the Grand Committee of the Finnish Parliament (1995-2000); acting Judge (July 2000 to December 2002), then Judge (January 2003 to September 2009), at the Supreme Administrative Court, Finland; responsible for legal and institutional questions during the negotiations for the accession of the Republic of Finland to the European Union; Advocate General at the Court of Justice from 7 October 2009 to 7 October 2015; Judge at the Supreme Administrative Court (2015-2019); Vice‑President of the Supreme Administrative Court (2018-2019); Judge at the Court of Justice since 7 October 2019.
Miguel Poiares Maduro holds the Vieira de Almeida Chair at the Global Law School of Universidade Católica Portuguesa. He was until the summer of 2020 Professor and Director of the School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute where he continues to be a Visiting Professor. He is also the Director of the Future Forum at the Gulbenkian Foundation.
From 2013 to 2015 we was Minister Adjunct to the Prime Minister and Minister for Regional Development in Portugal. Until 2009 he was Advocate General at the European Court of Justice. From July 2016 to May 2017 he was Chairman of the Governance and Review Committee of FIFA. He was also a member of the EU High Level Group on Media Freedom and Pluralism. He has been a regular Visiting Professor at Yale Law School, the College of Europe, Keio Law School (Tokyo) and the Centro de Estudios Constitucionales (Madrid). He has also taught at the London School of Economics, the Chicago Law School and Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
He is a Doctor of Laws by the European University Institute (Florence) and was the first winner of the Rowe and Maw Prize and winner of the Prize Obiettivo Europa (for the best PhD thesis at the EUI). He has been Fulbright Visiting Research Scholar at Harvard Law School. He is Co-Director of the Academy of International Trade Law (Macao). He belongs or has belonged to the editorial or advisory board of several law journals, including the European Law Journal and the Common Market Law Review, and was founding editor of Global Constitutionalism. He co-edited with Joseph Weiler the Special Book Review Issue of the European Law Journal and with Francis Snyder the Hart Publishers Series Studies in European Law and Integration. He has published, in several languages, on issues of EU law, constitutional law, human rights law, governance and international economic law. His more recent book is Democracy in Times of Pandemic (with Paul Kahn). He has also published a non-legal book (Crónicas de um Peixe Fora de Água, Lisboa, Entrelinhas, 2006). He has been honoured by the President of the Portuguese Republic with the Order of Sant'Iago da Espada for literary, scientific and artistic merit. In 2010 he was awarded the Gulbenkian Science Prize.
Katalin Miklóssy is Head of Eastern European studies and works at the Aleksanteri institute, University of Helsinki. She focuses on systemic change and regime security from comparative contemporary history perspective, with special interest on in-between regional development and East-West interaction. Her recent publications include the co-authored and co-edited special issue of the Journal of Contemporary European Studies ‘Erosion of the Rule of Law in East Central Europe’ (2018), and Strategic Culture in Russia’s Neighborhood (Lexington 2019). Miklóssy regularly comments on Eastern European politics in Finnish and Central European media.
Paul Nemitz is the Principal Advisor in the Directorate General for Justice and Consumers of the European Commission. He was appointed in April 2017, following a 6-year appointment as Director for Fundamental Rights and Citizen’s Rights in the same Directorate General. As Director, Nemitz led the reform of Data Protection legislation in the EU, the negotiations of the EU – US Privacy Shield and the negotiations with major US Internet Companies of the EU Code of Conduct against incitement to violence and hate speech on the Internet. He is a Member of Commission for Media and Internet Policy of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), Berlin and a visiting Professor of Law at the College of Europe in Bruges. Nemitz is also a Member of the Board of the Verein Gegen Vergessen – Für Demokratie e.V., Berlin and a Trustee of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York. He chairs the Board of Trustees of the Arthur Langerman Foundation, Berlin.
Nemitz studied Law at Hamburg University. He passed the state examinations for the judiciary and for a short time was a teaching assistant for Constitutional Law and the Law of the Sea at Hamburg University.
He obtained a Master of Comparative Law from George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C., where he was a Fulbright grantee. He also passed the first and second cycle of the Strasbourg Faculty for Comparative Law.
Recent publications: “The Human Imperative – Democracy, Law and Ethics in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”, forthcoming 2021, enhanced translation of “Prinzip Mensch – Demokratie, Recht und Ethik im Zeitalter der Künstlichen Intelligenz, with Matthias Pfeffer, Dietz Verlag, 2020; Critical reflections on Constitutional Democracy in the European Union, S. Garben, I. Govaere and P. Nemitz (Eds.), Oxford, Hart Publishing, 2019. Follow Paul Nemitz on Twitter: @PaulNemitz . He is the #1 Technology influencer and overall #13 influencer on EU issues in the annual #EUInfluencer Ranking.
Jörg Polakiewicz is Director of Legal Advice and Public International Law (Legal Adviser) of the Council of Europe since 1 October 2013. Between 2010 and 2013 he was head of the human rights development department in the Council of Europe, overseeing the Council's intergovernmental and cooperation work related to human rights, including reform of the European Court of Human Rights, accession of the European Union to the European Convention on Human Rights, and capacity-building activities in Eastern and Central Europe.
Between 1 October 2013 and 8 June 2018 he served as the Secretary to the Advisory Panel of Experts on Candidates for election as Judge to the European Court of Human Rights. Between 2008 and 2010, he was head of the law reform department, covering judicial co-operation and standard-setting in criminal, civil and public law. During this period he served as secretary to the committee set up under the Budapest convention on cybercrime (T-CY) and oversaw the launching of the modernisation of data protection Convention 108. He joined the Council of Europe in 1993, working on constitutional reform in Eastern and Central Europe (with European Commission for Democracy through Law - Venice Commission), and subsequently in the Council of Europe's legal service and human rights law and policy division.
He is also a professor at the Europa-Institut of the University of the Saarland in Saarbrücken. From 1986 to 1993, he was a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public and International Law in Heidelberg. In addition to numerous articles on international, European and constitutional law, he is co-editor of Fundamental Rights in Europe (Oxford University Press 2001), author of Treaty-making in the Council of Europe (Council of Europe Publishing 1999) and The Obligations of States arising from the Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (Springer) which was published in German in 1993.
Werner Schroeder is a Professor for European Law and Public International Law at the University of Innsbruck, Austria.
Born 1962 in Cologne. He pursued legal studies at the Universities of Passau, Germany, and Geneva, Switzerland, and graduated in 1986. He was awarded a Dr. iur. by the University of Passau, 1989 and a Master of Laws (LL.M.) by the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, 1992. Between 1990 and 1993 he worked as an Attorney at Law. From 1993 to 2001, he was a University Assistant, later after, his habilitation in 1999, Assistant Professor at the University of Passau. 2001 he was appointed as Full Professor at the Department of European Union and Public International Law, University of Innsbruck. Since 2005 Werner Schroeder serves as the head of said department.
His main research interests lie in European Constitutional Law, Internal Market Law, European Competition Law, and Law of International Organizations. Several of Werner Schroeder’s publications deal with the values of the European Union. Among others, he has edited a book on “Strengthening the Rule of Law in Europe - From a Common Concept to Mechanisms of Implementation” (Hart Publishing 2016). He also publishes extensively on the challenges of legal harmonization and legal regulation by Union law.
Alexander Stubb has a vast background in academic, civil service and politics; he is an avid pro-European with experience and expertise across all EU institutions. He has served as Prime Minister, Finance Minister, Foreign Minister, Trade and Europe Minister of Finland from 2008 to 2016. He was a member of the European Parliament from 2004 and 2008, Chairman of the National Coalition Party from 2014 to 2016 and Vice President of the European Investment Bank from 2017 to 2020. Since May 2020, Alexander Stubb is Director and Professor at the School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute based in Fiesole, Florence.
Professor Mirosław Wyrzykowski was born on 1 April 1950 in Ciechanów. In 1971 graduated from the Faculty of Law and Administration of the Warsaw University. He was awarded his juris doctor’s degree from the Warsaw University in 1975, and a habilitated doctor’s degree in 1986. Since 1991 a professor of the Warsaw University, chairing the Comparative and Economic Law Division of the Institute of Legal Administrative Studies at the Faculty of Law and Administration of the Warsaw University. From 1996 to 1999 Deputy Dean and from 1999 to 2001 Dean of the Faculty of Law. In 1988-1990 Head of the Department of Constitutional Freedoms and Rights in the Office of the Commissioner for Citizens Rights. In the period 1990-1993, and 1996-2001 member of the Prime Minister’s Legislative Council. From 1996 to 2001 Director of the Centre for Constitutionalism and Legal Culture at the Public Affairs Institute. In the period 1999-2001 member of the Legal Advisory Committee of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. In November 2001 the Sejm of the Republic of Poland appointed him judge of the Constitutional Tribunal.
In the period 1990-1995 a professor at the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law in Lousanne and since 1997 visiting professor of the Central European University in Budapest. Lecturer among others at universities of Paris (Sorbonne), Bonn, Sydney, Konstanz, Bayreuth. Member of the Legal Science Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences. President of the Polish Section of the International Legal Sciences Association. Member of several scientific councils such as Legal Sciences Institute of Polish Academy of Sciences, National School of Public Administration, Institute of Sciences on State and Law and the Legal Administrative Studies Institute at the Warsaw University. Author of numerous publications (monographs, articles, and other works in Polish, and other languages) on administrative and constitutional law.