The European Standardisation System at a Crossroads

Dr. Justus Baron is a Research Director at Northwestern University, Center on Law, Business, and Economics. Justus holds a PhD in Economics from Mines ParisTech. His area of expertise is the economic analysis of technological innovation, standardisation, and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR).

Justus’ academic research has been published in leading scholarly outlets, such as Research Policy, International Journal of Industrial Organization, Antitrust Law Journal, and Journal of Economics and Management Strategy. Justus has created the Searle Center Database, which offers comprehensive data on standards and standardisation processes to academic researchers.

Justus regularly contributes to European policy debates on topics related to standardisation. He has authored several comprehensive studies for the Joint Research Center of the European Commission on the governance of standards organisations and the licensing of Standard-Essential Patents (SEP). He was also a member of the European Commission’s Expert Group on SEPs, and has produced empirical studies to support the European Commission with an impact assessment on SEPs.

MEP Adam Bielan is the ECR coordinator of the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee and former coordinator of the Special Committee on Artificial Intelligence in the Digital Age (AIDA). Mr Bielan has been member of the European Parliament since 2004 (2004-2009, 2009-2014, and since 2019), and served as its Vice-president from 2007 to 2009. He is co-founder of the political group ‘European Conservatives and Reformists’ and held the deputy chairmanship of the group. From 2015 to 2019, Mr Bielan served as Deputy Speaker of the Polish Senate where he worked in the Foreign and EU Affairs, and the National Defence Committees. During the current mandate, MEP Bielan was involved in two key European legislations – the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA), and now is the Rapporteur for the IMCO Opinions for the Data Act and for the Cyber Resilience Act.

Michael is currently working as corporate officer working with strategies, standardisation policies and industry development in Europe, for Huawei Technologies. Michael is a seasoned senior executive since over 30 years in the Telecom and IT industry, pioneering mobile technology and industry , with background and executive leadership experience from companies such as IBM, Ericsson and now Huawei, and from various parts of the world. Michael is currently also chairman of Policy Group at DIGITALEUROPE association, also active in other associations working with digital and standardisation policies, and very involved also in SDOs such as ETSI, and engaged in recent developments on European standardisation strategy.

Prof. Pierre Larouche holds the chair of Law and Innovation at Université de Montréal, where he also directs the PhD programme on Innovation, Science, Technology and Law.

A graduate of McGill University, Bonn University and Maastricht University and a law clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada, Pierre Larouche was Professor of Competition Law at Tilburg University (Netherlands) from 2002 to 2017. There he founded and directed the Tilburg Law and Economics Center (TILEC), one of the largest research centres on economic governance. He also conceived and launched the Bachelor Global Law, an innovative law degree inspired by his meta-comparative and inter-disciplinary method. In his capacity as Associate Dean, he led the LL.B. reform at Université de Montréal. Pierre Larouche also taught at the College of Europe (Bruges) (2004-2016), and he has been a guest professor or scholar at McGill University (2002), National University of Singapore (2004, 2006, 2008, 2011, 2013), Northwestern University (2009-2010, 2016-2017), Sciences Po (2012), the University of Pennsylvania (2015) and the Inter-Disciplinary Center (IDC, 2016).

Pierre Larouche’s research centers around economic governance, and in particular how law and regulation struggle to deal with complex phenomena such as innovation. An expert in competition law and civil liability, his works have been cited by the European Court of Justice and the UK Supreme Court, and they have influenced EU policy on electronic communications, competition and standardisation.

Sophie Mueller is Head of Unit for Standards Policy in DG GROW since April 2022. She was previously the Deputy and acting Head of the same unit since March 2021. In this role, she is responsible for the European standardisation system from a regulatory, financial and stakeholder engagement perspective. The unit’s mission is to valorise standards as a tool that support the competitiveness, recovery, twin transition and resilience of the EU’s industrial ecosystems.

She started her career in the European Commission at DG Enterprise & Industry in 2010 and was responsible for files like Key Enabling Technologies and Corporate Social Responsibility. For 6.5 years she worked in the offices of the Director-General and Deputy Director-Generals at DG GROW, advising on and handling daily matters relating to industrial policy, sectorial files like automotive, chemicals or tourism and the green transition of industries. Before her employment with the European Commission, Sophie worked for the World Health Organization in Geneva and a private public affairs consultancy firm in Brussels. She holds degrees in Political Science and Advanced European Studies from the Universities of Bonn (DE) and Basel (CH).

Urška Petrovčič is a director of economic strategy at Qualcomm, where her work focuses on innovation economics, IP policy and antitrust. She is also a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, where she co-founded the Forum for Intellectual Property—a center that promotes data-driven research on the role of IP in innovation economies. Since 2017, Dr. Petrovčič has acted as the European Commission’s non-governmental adviser for the Unilateral Conduct Working Group of the International Competition Network. Before joining Qualcomm, she was Vice President at the economic consulting company Criterion Economics.

Dr. Petrovčič holds a B.A. in law from the University of Ljubljana, a Master of Law and Economics from Erasmus University Rotterdam, and an LL.M. and a Ph.D. in law from the European University Institute. Her publications on the enforcement of standard-essential patents (SEPs) include a book, Competition Law and Standard Essential Patents: A Transatlantic Perspective (Wolters Kluwer 2014), and articles in the Common Market Law Review and other journals.

Elena Santiago Cid is the CEN and CENELEC Director General since 1 January 2010. CEN and CENELEC are two of the three recognised European Standardisation Organisations supporting European Policies and Legislation. Moreover, Mrs Santiago Cid is also Vice-President at the Women4Cyber Foundation.

CEN and CENELEC, recognised Standardisation Organisations under EU Law, are leading providers of European Standards that are driven by business and made through a transparent, balanced and consensus-based process in which all relevant stakeholders, including societal interest groups and SMEs are involved. The organisations actively support international standardisation and cooperate closely with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in order to foster and promote European competitiveness in the global market.

Mrs Santiago Cid graduated in Electronic Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Madrid and has 30 years’ experience in standardisation.

Alexandre de Streel is the Academic Director of the digital research programme at the Brussels think-tank Centre on Regulation in Europe (CERRE), professor of European law at the University of Namur and visiting professor at the College of Europe (Bruges) and SciencesPo Paris. He sits in the scientific committees of the Knight-Georgetown Institute (US), the European University Institute-Centre for a Digital Society (Italy) and the Mannheim Centre for Competition and Innovation (Germany).

His main research areas are regulation and competition policy in the digital economy (telecommunications, platforms and data) as well as the legal issues raised by the developments of artificial intelligence. He regularly advises the European Union and international organisations on digital regulation.

Previously, Alexandre held visiting positions at New York University Law School, the European University Institute in Florence, Panthéon-Assas (Singapore campus), Barcelona Graduate School of Economics and the University of Louvain. He also worked for the Belgian Deputy Prime Minister, the Belgian Permanent Representation to the European Union, and the European Commission. He has also been the chair of the expert group on the online platform economy, advising the European Commission.

Gerry McQuaid is the Director for Telecoms and Internet Security at Ofcom with a focus on regulating the technical aspects of security within the regimes of the Telecoms Security Act and NIS Directive. Prior to Ofcom he took a detour spending two years in The Hague securing an international organisation’s operations under the chemical weapons convention. Working for a global operator and a vendor, he was responsible for managing the various national security obligations globally. He has chaired or participated in a number of ETSI/3GPP/GSMA technical security committees, ERNCIP, ENISA and EuroPol EC3. Additionally, he has invested time advising various international bodies particularly on capacity building and specific vendor related oversight e.g. evaluation centres and supply chain security.