Meet our speakers
In 2014, before arriving to the European Commission, Ms Jourová held the position of Minister for Regional Development in the Czech Republic. Previous to this, from 2006 to 2013, she worked in her own company as an international consultant on European Union funding and was also involved in consultancy activities in the Western Balkans relating to the European Union Accession.
She holds a Degree in Law (Mgr.) and a Master’s degree (Mgr.) in the Theory of Culture from Charles University, Prague. She also received an honorary doctorate from the University of Łódź (honoris causa) for her contribution to the protection of the rule of law and democracy.
Or’s research focuses on the boundaries of competition law and its interaction with wider public policy objectives (e.g., sustainability, the regulation of digital platforms, financial stability, and labour rights). She also studies the institutional and procedural aspects of enforcement—how competition authorities and regulators prioritise cases, the role and effectiveness of judicial review, and the implications of decentralised enforcement within the EU’s multi-level governance framework.
In 2024, she joined as a Board Member the Inclusive Competition Forum, which is a platform and think tank connecting he Inclusive Competition Forum is a think tank connecting experts in competition law, with stakeholders working to promote more socially-inclusive competition law and policy in Europe and fairer, more sustainable market capitalism.
Since 2024, she acts (together with Giacomo Tagiuri and Jan Broulik) as Head of ASCOLA (Academic Society for Competition Law) Benelux Chapter.
In the past Mark was Team Leader for the European Commission on a data protection project overseeing implementation of data protection legislation in non-EU states, with a focus on the Global South and Asia. Before Brussels, Mark was also a Regional Director for an US development finance non-profit managing teams across the Middle East (Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Egypt) over a 4.5-year stint and spent 4 years as an EU policy advisor in London for the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). He has an undergraduate degree in Economics & Finance and master’s degrees in European Economics and Public Affairs and Public Policy. He is currently taking a postgraduate in EU Competition law at King’s College, London.
Mrs. Gotts previously worked as a staff attorney in the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureaus of Competition and Consumer Protection. Mrs. Gotts is a frequent guest speaker, has had approximately 200 articles published on antitrust related topics, and served as the editor of the ABA’s Merger Review Process book, Law Business Research’s Private Competition Enforcement Review (2008-2025 Editions) and Law Business Research’s Merger Control Review (2010-2025 Editions). She is a member of the editorial board of Antitrust Report.
She has lectured EU law at the Centre of Europe of the University of Warsaw, at the European School of Law and Administration in Warsaw and at the Technical University of Gdańsk. She has been a visiting professor at the University Panthéon-Assas in Paris, University Nice Sophia-Antipolis and University of Luxembourg. She obtained her professorship on the basis of her book on the right of defence in EU antitrust proceedings.
From September 2016 she is a Polish judge at the General Court of the European Union, since 2022 she is serving as a president of the chamber.
Since leaving the CJEU in 2020 following Brexit, she has turned more towards environmental law. She joined the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee in 2021 and now serves as a Vice Chair of that committee. As an honorary professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Edinburgh, Yorke Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Cambridge Law Faculty, an emeritus fellow of King's College Cambridge and an honorary fellow of St Edmund’s College, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College Oxford, and the British Academy, she maintains strong academic links with the United Kingdom. During the academic year 2023-2024 she was the Arthur Goodhart Visiting Professor in Legal Science at Cambridge University. She is also a visiting professor at the Riga Graduate School of Law in Latvia, and an adjunct professor at Trinity College Dublin. She holds honorary doctorates from the universities of Glasgow, Nottingham Trent, Stockholm and Edinburgh.
Eleanor was made a Dame Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in the 2024 New Year Honours Overseas and International List for services to Justice and to the Education of Law in the UK and Europe.
Before doctoral studies, Joanna was practising law in Traple, Konarski, Podrecki & Partners (Krakow and Warsaw), where she was part of Trade Marks & Patents Team and the Technology Media and Telecommunications (TMT) Team. She then gained academic experience as a Lecturer in Law in the UK conveying intellectual property modules, whilst also teaching competition law, data protection law, and commercial law.
Joanna is a member of the Patents Scholars Network, the European Policy for Intellectual Property (EPIP) Association, and the International Association for the Advancement of Teaching and Research in Intellectual Property (ATRIP).
