This book contains a collection of economic and legal essays written by academics and practitioners who contributed to the elective Master's course "State Aid and Public Procurement in the European Union" at Maastricht University, as well as two conferences on State aid and public procurement organized in Maastricht in 2013 and 2014. The course, the conferences, and this book aim to provide stakeholders - students, academics, practitioners, civil servants, and consumers - with a better knowledge of the EU rules on public procurement and State aid. By treating these two legal fields in one volume, the book also intends to draw attention to the largely unexplored links and interfaces between public procurement and State aid rules, which both aim to complete the internal market and to prevent the distortion of competition. Both fields also share common concepts, and, furthermore, observance of public procurement rules may limit the risk of individual transactions being qualified as State aid (as the Altmark case law and related Commission packages illustrate). [In 2011, the European Commission's Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency recognized the course "State Aid and Public Procurement in the European Union" as a Jean Monnet European Module (Lifelong Learning Program).] (Series: Ius Commune Europaeum - Vol. 131) [Subject: EU Law, Public Procurement Law, State Aid Law]
Sarah Schoenmaekers is an Assistant Professor of European law at Maastricht University, lawyer with Omnius lawyers, a Visiting Professor at the University of Hasselt and a postdoctoral researcher at the Open University of Heerlen.
In 2010, she successfully defended her doctoral thesis, "The Regulation of Architects. A Comparative Analysis"', in which the Belgian and Dutch regulations applicable to architects have critically been analysed. She specialised in European law on the four freedoms, more particularly the European diploma-recognition regulations, as well as in public procurement law. She has acted as a project manager of large-scale investigations in relation to European law and publishes in this area. She also publishes in the area of the Belgian architects law. Since 2014 she is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal "Tijdschrift voor Bouwrecht en Onroerend Goed".
Wouter Devroe is a full Professor of Law and Chair of the Economic Law Department at KU Leuven. He is also a full Professor of Competition law at Maastricht University and an expert member ("assessor") of the Belgian national competition authority. His teaching, publications and legal practice focus on EU substantive law, as well as national and EU economic and competition law. As an attorney (Brussels Bar, Allen & Overy LLP), he represents corporate clients before national and EU administrative authorities and courts. He previously clerked at the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg. Wouter Devroe co-manages the "Ius commune casebooks for the common law of Europe".
After graduating in economics (specialisations: microeconomics, antitrust policy)
Niels Philipsen started a Ph.D. research in the field of Law and Economics at the Maastricht Institute for Transnational Legal Research (METRO). He obtained his Ph.D. degree in 2003 on the topic "Regulation of and by pharmacists in the Netherlands and Belgium: An economic approach". In 2003 he worked at the European Commission (DG Competition) in Brussels. In 2005 he was a visiting scholar at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign (USA), and in Spring 2007 he was a "European Visiting Professor" at Peking University in Beijing (China). From 2004 to 2006 he was a postdoctoral researcher in the NWO-programme "Shifts in Governance". Since 2007 he has been working as a Senior Researcher in various research projects (including contract research for, inter alia, various ministries, European Commission, OECD, insurers, and professional organizations). He teaches on Law and Economics, competition law and European integration. In 2013 he became Vice-Director of METRO, the Maastricht European Institute for Transnational Legal Research, located at the Faculty of Law.
