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.

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 the international section
EuroEFE

Catalina Guerrero

Catalina Guerrero is head of section of 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Lorenzo Prats Albentosa

Lecturer
Autonomous University of Barcelona

Prof. Dr. 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).

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.

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.