Speakers at the 4th Notaries of Europe Congress

Tiina Astola

Director-General for Justice and Consumers
European Commission

Tiina Astola

On 1 February 2017, Ms Tiina Astola became Director-General for Justice and Consumers at the European Commission. The DG deals with civil justice, including contract and company law, criminal justice, fundamental rights, including 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.

Pilar del Castillo

Member ITRE Committee
European Parliament

Pilar del Castillo

Former Minister of Education and Culture from 2000 to 2004, Pilar del Castillo was elected to the European Parliament for the first time in 2004. She belongs to the Partido Popular (People’s Party), which in turn is a member of the European People’s Party. She is the European Parliament’s rapporteur on the European Electronic Communications Code. She has also been, among others, the rapporteur of the Telecoms Single Market Regulation; the Directive on Security of Networks and Information Systems for the ITRE committee; the Regulation on the Body of European Regulators in Electronic Communications (BEREC); the report on Cloud Computing Strategy for Europe and the Report “A Digital Agenda for Europe: 2015.eu”, to name just some examples.
Del Castillo is the Chair of the European Internet Forum (EIF), Vice-President of the European Energy Forum, member of the Board of Knowledge4Innovation (K4I) and member of the Transatlantic Policy Network. Del Castillo is Professor in Political Science and Administration. She obtained a PhD in Law from Complutense Univeresity. Before, she had attended Ohio State University on a Fulbright scholarship, graduating with a Master’s degree in Political Science. She was the Executive President of the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (Sociology Research Centre) from 1996 to 2000.

Örjan Brinkman

President
The European Consumer Organisation (BEUC)

Örjan Brinkman

Örjan Brinkman was born in 1956. He graduated with a teaching diploma in 1978 and served as a pre-primary and municipality principal until 1988 and later worked as Head of Development and County Manager in TBV adult education (until 1996), Marketing Manager and expert on labour market and education in the Women´s Forum foundation (until 2002), Director of Administration in culture and education in the municipality of Sodertalje, Principal in primary and secondary education in Vittra until 2006 and Secretary General of The Swedish Disability Federation until 2012.
He was also a member of the Monitoring Committee and the Working Committee of The European Social Fund I Sweden until 2011 and of the Swedish Government’s Disability Delegation in 2011.
Today he is active in a number of confidential assignments relating to his current position. He is a member of the Board of Agriculture’s consumer advisory group, the Chemicals Agency’s advisory council, President in Väddö Södertörn – College foundation, Member of the Dialogue Forum – Dental and Pharmaceutical Benefits Agency, President of The Swedish Consumers Association and Råd & Rön Consumer Magazine, President of BEUC – The European Consumer Organisation.

Evelyn Regner

Member JURI Committee
European Parliament

Evelyn Regner

Evelyn Regner, born in Vienna in 1966, first became a Member of the European Parliament in 2009. She is a member of the Legal Affairs Committee and the Committee of Inquiry into Money Laundering, Tax Avoidance and Tax Evasion, as well as substitute Member of the Employment and Social Affairs Committee and the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality. Moreover, she is a member of the Delegation for relations with the countries of the Andean Community and the Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly. After her law studies and her first working experience at Amnesty International, she started her career as a lawyer at the Department for Social Policy at the Austrian Trade Union Federation (ÖGB). Until her election to the European Parliament, she was the head of the EU and International Affairs Department of the Austrian Trade Union Federation.

Cristian Buşoi

Member ITRE Committee
European Parliament

Cristian Bușoi

Mr Cristian Bușoi has been a member of the European Parliament since 2007 and is currently active in the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy, the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection, the Delegation to the EU – Ukraine Parliamentary Committee and the Delegation for the EURONEST Parliamentary Assembly. In 2016, he was the only MEP awarded the MEP Award for Healthcare and was distinguished by the European Organisation “Eurordis” with a trophy recognising his support for patients suffering from rare diseases.
Prior to this, Cristian Busoi was President of Romania’s National Health Insurance House (2013 – 2014 ) and member of the Romanian Parliament (2004 – 2007), where he was part of the Health and Family Committee.
Mr. Buşoi has been a member of the National Liberal Party for 20 years and currently holds the position of President of PNL Bucharest. In the PNL he has also served as Secretary General, First Vice-President and member of the Permanent Political Bureau.
Cristian Bușoi graduated from Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Bucharest, Carol I National Defence College and the Law School of Titu Maiorescu University. In 2010 he obtained his Ph.D. in Public Health and Health Management from the University of Medicine and Pharmacy Victor Babes Timisoara.

Frédéric Simon

Editor
Euractiv

Frédéric Simon

Frédéric Simon is the publisher and editor of EurActiv, the leading specialised EU media. He joined EurActiv in 2003 as a reporter to cover some of the EU’s most heated policy debates such as the REACH regulation on chemicals, energy liberalisation, and the emissions trading scheme. In his current position, he oversees the editorial and IT departments of EurActiv in Brussels, Paris and Berlin while continuing to write about EU affairs with a particular focus on economic and environmental issues.
Frédéric is also Brussels correspondent for France 24, the 24/7 international TV channel. He graduated in journalism from Brussels University (ULB) in 1998 and holds a Master’s degree in EU politics from the Institut d’Etudes Européennes (IEE) in Brussels.

Catalina Guerrero

Head of section
EuroEFE

Catalina Guerrero

Catalina Guerrero is head of section of EuroEFE at the International Department of Agencia Efe, the first agency in Spanish and fourth in the world. Her professional performance is now focused on the Euroefe.euractiv.es project, which she joined in January 2016 to follow the current affairs of the European Union (EU) from a Spanish and multimedia perspective.
She previously spent nine years as the editor of EFE’s Integrated Culture department (National and International), where she closely followed the intellectual trends of Europe and the rest of the world. She came to Culture after an enriching eight-year stint in Paris, where she was the EFE correspondent from 1999 to 2007.
In her early professional years she was involved in radio. With a degree in Journalism from Madrid’s Universidad Complutense in 1992, she also holds diplomas as a Professional Expert on Culture, Civilisation and Islamic Religion from the Spanish Open University (UNED) (2007) and on the European Union (2016) from the Madrid Diplomatic School.

José Manuel García Collantes

President
Council of the Notariats of the European Union

José Manuel García Collantes

José Manuel García Collantes is the CNUE President for 2017. He has served as a notary in Spain since 1979. Over the last 20 years, he has been a delegate of the Spanish Notariat for the European Union and International Affairs as well as President of the Commission for European Affairs of the International Union of Notaries. Moreover, he was President of the 2007 World Notary Congress. He is currently an advisor to the International Union of Notaries. In Spain, he was President of the General Council of the Spanish Notariat between 2013 and 2016 and Dean of the Notarial Chamber of Madrid. In the academic sphere, he holds a Doctorate in Law and has been an associate professor in Commercial Law at the Complutense University. In 2016, the Spanish Government awarded him with the Grand Cross of the Order of San Raimundo of Peñafort due to his “distinguished accomplishments” in the field of Law.

Peter Scherrer

Deputy Secretary General
European Trade Union Confederation

Peter Scherrer

Peter Scherrer was elected as ETUC Deputy Secretary General at the Paris Congress in 2015 having, previously worked for the German Metalworkers’ Trade Union (IG Metall) in Frankfurt, where he held the post of European Industrial Policy officer.
Before that, he spent three years (2011-2014) as Labour Director with ArcelorMittal Bremen, and was General Secretary of the European Metalworkers’ Federation (EMF) from 2005-2011.
Peter was born in Clarholz, Westphalia in Germany. He started his working life at the age of 14 as an apprentice metalworker, and was later employed as a welder, truck driver and postman. During the 1980s, he studied history, social sciences and journalism in Germany and the UK, obtaining a Master’s degree in history from the University of Bielefeld in 1989.
From 1990 onwards, Peter held a number of trade union and NGO positions in Germany and the Balkans. From 1998-2002 he was Editor-in-Chief of the South-East Europe Review for Labour and Social Affairs (SEER).

Susanne Knöfel

Deputy Head of Unit “Company Law”
European Commission

Susanne Knöfel

Susanne Knöfel is Deputy Head of Unit in the Unit “Company Law” in the European Commission, Directorate-General Justice and Consumers. The unit deals with European company law, corporate governance law and policy in general and also corporate governance in financial institutions. Susanne Knöfel previously had various functions in the European Commission, the European Parliament, including in the Secretariat of the Committee for Legal Affairs, and at Eurojust. She also worked at the Permanent Representation of the Federal Republic of Germany to the European Union and at the German Federal Ministry of Justice. She studied law in Hamburg and London. She holds a doctorate in law from Hamburg University and a Master in Laws from the London School of Economics.

Peter Bischoff-Everding

Deputy Head of Unit “Consumer and marketing law”
European Commission

Peter Bischoff-Everding

Peter Bischoff-Everding is a lawyer by training and holds a Ph.D. from Hamburg law school in competition law. He started his professional career as associate lawyer in a law firm in Berlin before he joined the legal department of the German Ministry of Economy.
Since 2004, Peter has been European Commission official, working first in the Enterprise and Industry Directorate-General in the area of free movement of goods and under the WTO rules concerning technical barriers to trade.
He was then responsible for legal and regulatory issues in the unit in charge of EU policy and legislation in the medical devices and cosmetics sectors. From October 2012 to September 2016, Peter was deputy Head of Unit in the Health and Consumers Directorate-General in charge of consumer product and service safety.
Since October 2016, Peter has been deputy Head of Unit in the field of Consumer and Marketing Law which is part of the Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers. His unit manages the cross-cutting EU consumer law body and is currently preparing a possible legislative proposal to further modernise the rules of EU consumer law.

Jens Bormann

President
German Federal Chamber of Civil Law Notaries

Jens Bormann

Jens Bormann is the President of the Bundesnotarkammer (Federal Chamber of Civil Law Notaries) and notary in Ratingen (North Rhine-Westphalia). He studied law at the Universities of Constance, Geneva and Harvard. After his studies, he was a research assistant at the Institute of German and Foreign Civil Procedure at the University of Freiburg where he received his doctorate in law. In 2002, he was appointed notarial candidate in Düsseldorf. From 2006 to 2011 he was Director General of the Bundesnotarkammer in Berlin. He has also been active as a member of the Advisory Board of the German Notarial Institute in Würzburg and member of the Board of Directors of the German Association of Notarial Professional Law. Mr Bormann lectures at the Faculties of Law in Freiburg and Hanover and teaches at the German Lawyers’ Institute in Bochum.

José Ángel Martínez Sanchiz

President
General Council of the Spanish Notariat

José Ángel Martínez Sanchiz

Antonio Ghio

President
Malta Information Technology Law Association

Antonio Ghio

Dr. Antonio Ghio is a partner at Fenech & Fenech Advocates and heads its ICT & IP Law Departments. For the past twelve years his work has solely revolved around ICT law issues, trying to find solutions to the constant struggle existing between law and technology, both inside and outside of the courtrooms.
Ghio also lectures in ICT law and Cyber Crime at the University of Malta and held the position of Chairman of the Malta Communications Authority after having served as a member of the Board of Directors for the last five years.
He has an LL.D from the University of Malta where he specialised in legal aspects of Internet security and online privacy as well as an LL.M from Strathclyde University where he specialised in offshore electronic commerce.
Ghio is a founding member and current President of the Malta Information Technology Law Association – MITLA. He is a regular speaker on ICT law issues in conferences both locally and abroad and has a regular column on ICT law issues in the Sunday Times of Malta as well as a personal blog on ICT Law issues at ictlawmalta.blogspot.com.

Isidoro Antonio Calvo Vidal

General Coordinator
4th Notaries of Europe Congress

Isidoro Antonio Calvo Vidal

Isidoro Antonio Calvo Vidal holds a law degree and a doctorate of law (cum laude) from the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain). He has been serving as a notary in Spain since 1995. Mr Calvo Vidal is currently a delegate of the Spanish notariat for EU Affairs, member of the Board of the European Network of Registers of Wills Association and member of the General Council of the International Union of Notaries. He has written many publications, especially on company and succession law. “The European Certificate of Succession” is one of his recent and most known works.

Marius Kohler

Vice-President
Council of the Notariats of the European Union

Marius Kohler

Marius Kohler is the Vice-President of the Council of the Notariats of the European Union (CNUE) and since 2011 notary in Hamburg. He studied law at the Universities of Freiburg and Harvard. After his studies, he worked as research assistant at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg and the Institute for German and Foreign Civil Procedure Law at the University of Freiburg. After passing the Bar Exam at the Supreme Court of New York and working as a lawyer for the law firm GLEISS LUTZ in Stuttgart and Frankfurt, he was appointed notarial candidate in 2006. In 2007, he headed the department “notarial professional law” of the Federal Chamber of Civil Law Notaries (Bundesnotarkammer) and became its press spokesman afterwards. Between October 2007 and December 2010, he was the Head of Office of the Permanent Representation of the Bundesnotarkammer in Brussels before being appointed Director of the Bundesnotarkammer in March 2008. Ever since, Mr. Kohler has been deeply committed to the concerns of the German notariat and is active in various working groups of the Bundesnotarkammer, the CNUE, and the UINL (International Union of Notaries).

Mónica Fuentes Naharro

Professor
Complutense University of Madrid

Mónica Fuentes Naharro

Mónica Fuentes Naharro is a Counsel and Associate (tenured) Professor at the Complutense University of Madrid. She is a member of the European Commission’s Informal Corporate Law Expert Group (ICLEG). She also represented Spain in the Company Law Working Group on the Societas Unius Personae Directive Proposal and is now the Spanish representative member in the European Model Company Act (EMCA) Group. Mónica Fuentes has a PhD in Law (magna cum laude) with a thesis on “Creditors protection in groups of companies from a company law perspective (scope, deficiencies and reform proposals)”. She has also published many articles and books in the field of company law.

Corrado Malberti

Professor
University of Trento

Corrado Malberti

Corrado Malberti has been Professor of Commercial Law at the University of Trento since 2015. From 2010 to 2015 he was tenured Associate Professor of Commercial Law at the University of Luxembourg, where, between 2014 and 2015, he was also director of the Master 1 in European Law. He graduated from the University of Milan in 2000. He completed an LL.M. at the University of Chicago in 2005 and a Ph.D. in Commercial Law at Bocconi University (Milan) in 2006. Since 2008 he has been a notary in Turin, Milan and Como. Since 2011 he has been Chair of the Company Law working group of the Council of the Notariats of the European Union. His principal research interests are national, comparative and European company law, financial market regulation and competition law. He has widely published in the fields of company law, financial market regulation and competition law in English, Italian and French.

Tamás Parti

President
Budapest Chamber of Civil Law Notaries

Tamás Parti

Dr Tamás PARTI, civil law notary in Budapest, President of the Budapest Chamber of Civil Law Notaries, member of the General Council of the UINL (International Union of Notaries), President of the CNUE’s Futurology Forum and Chair of the Committee for Technological Adaptation of the Hungarian Chamber of Civil Law Notaries. Furthermore, he is a lecturer in the Department of Civil Procedure at the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest (ELTE) and examiner in the legal profession examinations [Bar examinations] in Hungary. His PhD field of research is the study of the effects of contemporary social and technological processes on fundamental rights – an aspect of this research is the study of the effects of technological progress on the notarial profession.

Lorenzo Prats Albentosa

Professor
Autonomous University of Barcelona

Lorenzo Prats Albentosa

Chair of civil Law, Autonomous University of Barcelona, since 2008 (previously, University Complutense-Madrid, 2007, University of Cantabria, 2002, University of Valencia, 1984). Arbitrator since 2007. Member of the Cabinet of the Ministry of Justice, Spanish government (2004-2007). Law practitioner (since 1986). Education: University of Valencia (Spain): Law Degree & PhD; Bologna University (IT): PhD researcher; visiting professor: Cambridge University (UK), Chicago University (USA), London School of Economics (UK).

Peter Kindler

Professor
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

Peter Kindler

Peter Kindler, born in 1960, started his career as a Member of the German Bar in Munich, practising International Business Law as a lawyer (1988-1991). In 1991 he took a position as academic assistant at the Konstanz Faculty of Law, where he was appointed Lecturer in 1995 (Dr. iur. habil.). He held chairs for Corporate and Private Int’l Law in several universities (Heidelberg, Bochum, Augsburg) and since October 2011 he has held the Chair for Private and Corporate Law, Private International Law and Comparative Law at the Munich Law Faculty.
Since 1994 he has been involved in research and lecturing in the field of private international law and commercial law at, inter alia, various Italian universities. In 1999, Prof. Kindler was elected secretary general of the German-Italian Lawyers’ association and in 2017 the Università degli Studi del Molise/Italy conferred the degree of doctor honoris causa in Business Law upon him.
Kindler is a board member of several German and Italian legal journals (Recht der Internationalen Wirtschaft; Banca, borsa, titoli di credito; Rivista di diritto civile et al.). He is also a member of the German Institution of Arbitration (www.disarb.org) and since 2006 he has served both in ad hoc and institutional arbitrations.

Alexandre Liborio Dias Pereira

Professor
University of Coimbra

Alexandre Liborio Dias Pereira

Alexandre Liborio Dias Pereira (LL.B, LL.M, LL.D Coimbra), born in July 1970, is a full-time law professor at the University of Coimbra. He teaches Contracts, Computer Law, Copyright and Business Law, and supervises postgraduate research. He is also part-time adjunct professor at the Coimbra Business School and invited lecturer of the Summer School on European Private Law at the University of Salzburg (Austria). He has also served as visiting full-time law professor at the University of Macau (China), and has been FCT sabbatical fellow at the Max-Planck Institute, Munich (Germany). He has presented communications worldwide and published more than one hundred scientific works in Portugal and abroad. His research focuses on the legal environment of the EU digital single market.

Jacques Delvaux

Lawyer
Luxembourg Bar

Jacques Delvaux

Mr Jacques DELVAUX was appointed notary on 1 February 1980 in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and fulfilled this role until 31 December 2011, from which date he became an honorary notary. Having reached the age limit for performing the function of notary in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, he now practises as a lawyer at the Luxembourg Bar. He was President of the Chamber of Notaries of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg for eighteen years and was elected twice (1997 and 2006) as President of the CNUE. He is a member of the Company Law Legislative Review Board and of the Legal Commission of Luxembourg’s Companies Register. He gives training courses in company law for notary students in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. He is the author of various publications on company law.

Cesare Licini

Civil law notary in Pesaro

Cesare Licini

Cesare Licini is a notary in (Italy). He graduated in law from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan (1977). He has had numerous responsibilities at European and international level. In particular, Cesare Licini is a member of the Steering Committee of the International Union of Notaries (UINL). He was Vice-President of the UINL’s European Affairs Commission (CAE) from 2004 to 2007 and Chair of the CNUE’s Anti-Money Laundering working group from 2011 to 2017. He is also a UINL and CNUE delegate in the Financial Action Task Force on money laundering (FATF). Mr Licini has published widely and participated in numerous national and international congresses and conferences.

José Carmelo Llopis Benlloch

Civil Law Notary in Valencia

José Carmelo Llopis Benlloch

José Carmelo Llopis Benlloch was born in Valencia (Spain) in 1978. After graduating in 2001 from the Faculty of Law at the University of Valencia, he became notary in the class of 2005-2008.
In 2013 he became a mediator at the Solutio Litis Foundation of the Notarial College of Valencia.
Since 2014, he has been writing weekly about technological and notarial issues on his blog and participating in committees and working groups at a local (IT Committee), national (Jurisprudence Group) and international level (CNUE New Technologies working group).
In 2016, he was co-author of two ebooks relating to Digital Inheritance and Electronic Evidences, and he spoke about New Technologies at conferences in Spain, like NotarTIC, and abroad, such as the 5th World Notarial University in Rome organised by the UINL.
Also, in 2016 he was honoured to be the Spanish national rapporteur for Topic II concerning electronic notarial acts and paperless processes at the 28th International Congress of the Notariat in Paris.

Erwin Roelofs

Candidate notary
Loyens & Loeff

Erwin Roelofs

Erwin Roelofs (1983), a candidate civil law notary, is a member of the Corporate/M&A practice group. He specialises in and advises in particular on restructuring (cross-border mergers, conversions and divisions). In June 2014, he defended his PhD thesis entitled: ‘Cross-border division of companies with limited liability’ at the University of Utrecht. Erwin is a member of the Royal Netherlands Society of International Law, the International Law Association and the Vereeniging ‘Handelsrecht’. He regularly publishes on cross-border restructurings in national and international literature.

Alexander Rebs

CEO
REBS Zentralschmiertechnik GmbH

Alexander Rebs

Alexander Rebs is an entrepreneur and CEO of REBS Zentralschmiertechnik GmbH. He is also Head of the Board of Directors of the subsidiaries REBS Lubrication Technology Ltd., Shanghai, and REBS Lubrication India Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai. Mr Rebs studied general engineering at the University of Duisburg-Essen and graduated as an engineer in 1990. After his studies, he was assistant manager and project engineer for clients in the steel and aluminium industry. REBS Zentralschmiertechnik GmbH, whose headquarters are in Ratingen, is a leading supplier of centralized lubrication systems for business clients worldwide. The family business which is a member of the sustainable development initiative “Blue Competence” of the German Mechanical Engineering Federation (VDMA) has about 80 employees on the Ratingen site and 150 in total. It generates a turnover of about 17 million euros, while the export share is about 30%.

Remco van der Kuijp

Civil Law Notary in Strijen (Netherlands)

Remco van der Kuijp

Remco van der Kuijp is a Dutch Civil Law Notary (2006) and a member of the Board of the Royal Dutch Society for Notaries (KNB). He is treasurer and as a Board member responsible for ICT projects and pension rights. He is involved in the development of Notary-ID, a new project of the Dutch notariat. Furthermore, he has a keen interest in blockchain and online business development for notaries.