EU Foreign Subsidies Regulation – Advantage or Burden?

Professional experience  

• 2009 - Present: Lecturer tax law Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve
• Mar 2022 - Present: Managing Partner, PwC Legal
  
• Mar 2022  - Present: Financial Services Tax Partner, PwC Legal
• Mar 2020 - Mar 2022: HC Firm Partner

• Jul 2007 - Feb 2022: Partner, PwC Belgium Financial Services Tax Country Leader  

• 2004 - 2007: Director Financial Services Tax & Legal
• 2000 – 2004: Tax Lawyer, Senior Associate, Freshfields  

• 1996 – 2000: Tax Lawyer, Associate, Loeff Claeys Verbeke (now Allen & Overy)  

• 1995 – 1996: Member of the Department of Social & Economic law, Tax team of Professor Jacques Malherbe, Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve  

Experience

• Tax adviser of top 5 banks operating in Belgium and foreign players

• Experienced adviser of a wide variety of players (SICAV’s, insurance companies, holding companies, …)

• Providing practical update and guidance of the tax legislation in relation to tax treatment of financial products

• Wide ruling practice

• Tax aspects of treasury centres

• Involvement in the main restructurings  of FS players over the last years

Qualifications

• 1995, Law Degree, Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve

• Member of the IFA

• Member of CRIDES, UCL

• Maître de conférences invité, Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve

Andrea Lensi Orlandi is a Legal Partner at PwC TLS, responsible for New Law services and the legal services area contact in Rome. Andrea has over twenty years of experience in data, information, and technology law, and specializes in corporate law and extraordinary transactions. A longstanding advocate of innovation, he develops legaltech tools related to efficiency and risk management across all areas of law. He is a lawyer admitted to the Supreme Court (cassation lawyer) and holds an LLM in Technology Law from King’s College London. He graduated in 1998 from the University of Milan.

Enrico Letta served as Prime Minister of Italy from 2013 to 2014. Currently, he is the Dean of the IE School of Politics, Economics, and Global Affairs at IE University, and President of the Jacques Delors Institute. In September 2023 the European institutions tasked him with the elaboration a Report on the Future of the Single Market. 

From March 2021 to February 2023, he was the National Secretary of the Democratic Party in Italy. Prior to that, from 2015 to 2021, he was Dean of the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po Paris.

In 2019, he was appointed President of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs (APSIA) for a two-year term. Earlier in his career, Letta served as Minister for EU Affairs (1998–1999), Minister for Industry, Trade and Crafts (2000), Minister for Industry and Foreign Trade (2000–2001), and Undersecretary of State to Prime Minister Romano Prodi (2006–2008). 

Francesca is a Senior Competition Correspondent for POLITICO in Brussels. She has been a competition journalist since 2012, when she joined Policy and Regulatory Report (PaRR).

Francesca spent the first part of her journalism career at various publications in Milan, including Thomson Reuters. She grew up between Italy, Brussels and the UK, and holds a Master of Arts from the College of Europe.

She/he speaks Italian, English and French.

Henri Piffaut is an Adviser with the European Commission - DG COMP in Brussels, focusing on foreign subsidies. Previously, he was Vice President of the French Competition Authority, and an Adviser to the Deputy Director General for mergers at DG COMP.

He has spent most of his career in the competition policy field. During the academic year 2016/17 he served as a fellow at Harvard University where he pursued research on the interaction of competition policy and platform industries.

He has dealt with pay-for-delay cases in the pharmaceutical industry, conduct and merger cases in the energy, payment systems, IT and telecom industries, and State intervention in the transport industry. He holds degrees in science and engineering, political science and economics. 

Carmelo Fontana is Senior Regional Counsel at Google, where he leads the company’s commercial and regulatory legal practice in Italy. A dual-qualified attorney in California and Italy, Carmelo brings over two decades of experience at the intersection of law, technology, and innovation.

His expertise spans privacy and data protection, intellectual property, content licensing, intermediary liability, and digital regulation. Prior to joining Google in 2011, Carmelo held roles at Cleary Gottlieb in Rome and the European Commission Legal Service. He also co-founded a tech start-up operating across the U.S. and Asia.

Carmelo holds an LL.M. in Law, Science, and Technology from Stanford Law School, where he was a Fulbright Scholar. He has also served as a Research Fellow at the Stanford Transatlantic Technology Law Forum.

Dr. Lena Hornkohl studied law in Heidelberg and Uppsala. After obtaining her first state exam in 2014, she completed her legal clerkship at the Higher Regional Court Karlsruhe (with stages, inter alia, at the European Commission) and completed the second state exam in 2016.

After having earned a master’s degree from the College of Europe in European Law and Economic Analysis in 2019, she received a Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg for a dissertation on the protection of confidential information in private enforcement of European Competition Law in 2020.  

During her doctoral studies, she worked as a Research Assistant at the Chair for Civil Law, Corporate and Commercial Law, European Law and Comparative Law of Professor Müller-Graff at the University of Heidelberg. In 2019, she commenced her work as a lawyer in the competition law department of a major international law form in Brussels before joining the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for International, European and Regulatory Procedural Law as a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of European and Comparative Procedural Law in 2020. In 2022, she was appointed as Tenure Track Professor for European Law at the University of Vienna. She is currently also pursuing her postdoctoral studies (Habilitation) at the University of Heidelberg under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Dres.h.c. Burkhard Hess, Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Thomas Pfeiffer und Prof. Dr. Christian Heinze. Her research interests focus on European, Economic, Private, Procedural and Comparative Law. 

Lena Hornkohl has taught at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, the University of Trier, University of Heidelberg, the European University Institute, Ghent University, the Summer School of the University of Vienna, the University of Applied Sciences for the Administration of Justice of North Rhine-Westphalia and the Justice Academy of North Rhine-Westphalia. She is the president of IUS Omnibus, a member of the board of CELIS, and an editor at the Journal of European Competition Law & Practice (JECLAP), the Multimedia und Recht - Zeitschrift für IT-Recht und Recht der Digitalisierung (MMR), the EU Law Live Competition Corner, and the Kluwer Competition Law Blog.   

Ester Latorre is an Italian-qualified lawyer and researcher specialising in European Union law, competition law, and State aid. 

She holds a PhD in EU and competition law from the University of Milan, with a dissertation on the definition of State aid and the potential modernisation of the legal framework governing the sector. She is currently a research fellow at the University of Eastern Piedmont. 

She has authored numerous publications in leading legal journals and is a frequent speaker at both academic and professional conferences. 

Ester is a member of the Milan office of Greenberg Traurig, where she advises national and international clients on domestic and cross-border M&A transactions. 

Lewis Crofts leads MLex's editorial output, having developed the company's editorial approach from its origin through its expansion to a global news agency. He has an unrivalled reputation for breaking stories and providing analysis on complex legal disputes before regulators and courts around the globe. He has been instrumental in developing and leading MLex's unrivalled coverage of competition policy, litigation, regulation and international investigations. A graduate of Oxford University, Lewis has played a defining role in MLex's editorial direction, expansion and public profile.

With more than twenty years of experience, Allard Knook has advised EU Member States and several multinationals  on complex EU law matters, particularly in State aid and competition, and he has regularly guided notification procedures before the European Commission.

His work includes the design and assessment of public measures and strategic compliance with EU rules in close coordination with national authorities and EU institutions. Before joining PwC, he led the EU Law Department at the law firm of the Dutch State Advocate (landsadvocaat), which is the Dutch government’s principal external legal counsel representing the State in litigation and providing high-level legal advice. Earlier in his career, he practiced at CMS Legal.

Peter a tax partner of PwC China. Since 2010, Peter and team has been assisting many Chinese enterprises in responding to anti-dumping/anti-subsidy investigations initiated by foreign governments from financial and tax perspectives, and successfully helping many secure the lowest anti-dumping/anti-subsidy duty rates.

Since the EU Foreign Subsidies Regulation took effect in 2023, Peter and team has assisted several Chinese enterprises in navigating FSR voluntary declarations and ex officio investigations, including achieving the first instance of unconditional approval under the FSR for a Chinese enterprise. Peter has accumulated extensive experience in developing overall response strategies for enterprises, resolving practical challenges and demonstrating adaptability. His team is capable of compiling substantial financial contribution data within stringent timeframe, developing robust financial models, integrating and reconciling information according to FSR reporting requirements, and drafting response documents to the EU Commission.

Dr. Qian Ma is Local Partner at PwC Germany. She obtained her bachelor's degree in law in China, followed by a master's and a doctoral degree in law in Germany. Dr. Ma is a qualified attorney in both Germany and China, as well as a qualified solicitor in England, Wales, and Ireland.

Dr. Qian Ma specializes in cross-border mergers and acquisitions, real estate transactions, capital markets law, intellectual property law and commercial arbitration. She is dedicated to assisting both Chinese and multinational clients with their legal issues in Germany and internationally.

Before her tenure at PwC, she co-led the Clifford Chance China Desk in Germany and the Asia-to-Europe Work Group in Continental Europe. Previously, since 2003, she held the position of (Foreign) Associate at various international law firms in Frankfurt.

Dr. Ma is a regular speaker and moderator at international conferences and has published books and articles related to German and Chinese law. She also teaches at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, the University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt in Germany, and the University of Warsaw in Poland.

Heiner Mecklenburg is a Senior Manager (Counsel) in the Antitrust, Public Procurement and State Aid Law practice group in the Berlin office. He represents companies and associations in merger and foreign trade control matters as well as in antitrust and antitrust damages proceedings. He also regularly advises on antitrust compliance and distribution antitrust law issues.

Heiner Mecklenburg studied at Bucerius Law School in Hamburg. He holds a Master of Science in Political Economy from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Before joining PwC Legal AG, he worked as a senior associate at a leading global commercial law firm.

Luigi is an Italian qualified lawyer based in Milan and head of the Italian antitrust practice of PwC Legal STA Srl.

He joined PwC in January 2023, after gaining over 15 years of experience at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP (Milan and Brussels) and at Hogan Lovells (Milan).

Luigi graduated with honors from the State University of Milan law school in 2001. In 2004, he received an LL.M. degree from U.C. Berkeley –Boalt Hall School of Law on scholarship awarded by the State University of Milan law school. While at Boalt Hall, he was also a visiting scholar, conducting research on antitrust and intellectual property related matters.

Luigi assists Italian and international clients from a wide range of industries in every major area of antitrust and competition law, including complex multi-jurisdictional mergers and joint ventures, cartel investigations, abuse of dominance and restrictive practices cases, as well as compliance audits, state aid and foreign direct investment matters.

Luigi is ranked in all major antitrust publications, including Chambers, Who’s Who Legal and Global Competition Review.

Bonifacio García Porras currently serves as the Head of the "Foreign Subsidies" Unit within the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship, and SMEs (DG GROW). In this role, he leads a newly established team responsible for the implementation of the Foreign Subsidies Regulation in the context of public procurement, ensuring a level playing field across the EU internal market.

Before assuming his current position, Bonifacio was head of unit responsible for SMEs policy within the European Commission and previously assumed the role as the European Union’s chief negotiator for the plurilateral Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) under the World Trade Organization (WTO) framework, where he played a key role in advancing international public procurement standards.

He holds a law degree from the University of Salamanca (Spain, 1992), where he also pursued studies in macroeconomics and microeconomics. He obtained a Magister Legum (LL.M.) in European Legal Studies from the College of Europe in Bruges (Belgium, 1993). Bonifacio is a member of the Salamanca Bar and practiced European law for over seven years at leading Brussels law firms before joining the European Commission in 2000.

Throughout his career at the Commission, Bonifacio has held various high-level roles, including positions in the cabinets of Vice-President Loyola de Palacio and Commissioner Andris Piebalgs, with a focus on state aid, transport, and energy. He has also contributed to strategic areas such as the European Semester, public procurement, innovation, and communication, bringing a comprehensive and multidisciplinary perspective to EU policymaking.

Camilla currently serves as General Counsel for Lilly Italy and provides legal support to the wider Lilly international organization with a focus on the Cardio Metabolic Health Business Unit. She joined Lilly in 2018 as Legal Counsel. Over seven years, she has held various roles within Lilly Legal department, including a recent assignment in Indianapolis as Global and US Brand Attorney for the incretin portfolio. Camilla is qualified to practice law in Italy and the State of New York. She holds a law degree from Bocconi University in Milan and a Master of Laws (LLM) degree from New York University School of Law. Before joining Lilly, she practiced law at international law firms in New York and Milan for nine years.

Dr Hubert Klinger is an attorney and in-house counsel at Siemens AG in Munich. He advises clients worldwide on antitrust law, merger control, investment control and foreign subsidies control.

Before joining Siemens, Dr Klinger worked at Freshfields in Berlin. He spent his academic career at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and Université Panthéon-Assas in Paris.

Pierfrancesco Mattiolo is a PhD candidate and a graduate teaching and research assistant at the University of Antwerp.

He is conducting his doctoral research on the EU Foreign Subsidies Regulation and its interaction with competition and trade law.

In Antwerp, he teaches substantive EU law to undergraduate students and contributes to the LLM advanced courses on European Economic Regulation and Competition Law.

He is one of the managing editors of the CELIS Blog, an emerging forum for discussing law and economic security.

He has been invited to give seminars and teach at other academic institutions (inter alia, Sciences Po, the University of Bologna, and Zhongnan University of Economics and Law) and to share his expertise with European stakeholders.

Before starting his PhD, he gained experience as a policy assistant trainee at the Trade Policy Unit of the Permanent Representation of Italy to the EU in Brussels, and as an assistant project manager at the School of Policies in Rome. In addition to his academic and professional pursuits, Pierfrancesco collaborates with the Italy-ASEAN Association and ChinaFiles, a leading Italian news agency specialising in Asian affairs, on economic and trade matters. 

Lewis Crofts leads MLex's editorial output, having developed the company's editorial approach from its origin through its expansion to a global news agency. He has an unrivalled reputation for breaking stories and providing analysis on complex legal disputes before regulators and courts around the globe. He has been instrumental in developing and leading MLex's unrivalled coverage of competition policy, litigation, regulation and international investigations. A graduate of Oxford University, Lewis has played a defining role in MLex's editorial direction, expansion and public profile.

Mr. Fang joined Bank of China in 1990, and he served as General Manager of Bank of China Luxembourg SA Rotterdam Branch (2008–2011), Board Member of Bank of China (Hungary) (2011–2016), Counsellor of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC (2016), and Counsellor of the Chinese Embassy in the USA (2016–2019).

Mr. Fang was assigned as Secretary General of the China Chamber of Commerce to the EU (CCCEU) since November  2022.

Aude-Laure currently works at the Aide team (State aid & Foreign subsidies) of the Legal Service of the European Commission. 

Aude-Laure is a French qualified lawyer, graduated from the Paris II Panthéon-Assas University (with one year of study at the Charles University in Prague) and the College of Europe in Bruges.

After her traineeship in Paris, she worked in private practice in Brussels in the law from Cleary Gottlieb for 4+ years and she worked in DG COMP as a merger case handler. She worked on gun jumping cases and the Article 22 policy.

Ye Bin holds the position of Secretary-General of the Chinese Society of European Legal Studies (CSELS) of the Chinese Society for European Studies (CAES) and a Member of the China Society of Private International Law. He is on the editorial board of Chinese Journal of European Studies. He obtained his Ph.D. in Law at Wuhan University, China. He was a visiting student at University of Paris II, France (2007-2008). He was a Jean Monnet postdoctoral fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS) in the European University Institute (2014-2015). He was a visiting scholar at the EU-China Research Centre, Department of EU International Relations and Diplomacy Studies at the College of Europe, Bruges (September to November 2017).

His recent research output centers around key aspects of international trade and investment law, with a focus on critical subjects such as the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI), EU’s investment court system, as well as recent EU legislations or initiatives, including EU’s FDI Screening Mechanism, Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR), International Procurement Instrument (IPI), Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) and European Economic Security Strategy. 

Tom Patten is a partner in our Washington National Tax Services team that is on secondment to our UK firm and based in London. He is part of our core US Inbound team and leads our efforts to advise multinationals across Europe in relation to their US operations. He is also a member of our US Integrated Global Structuring team, which works with a range of clients to solve complex issues.

Tom has over 30 years of US federal corporate tax experience, including both domestic and international tax issues.  Tom has advised large US multinationals, non-US multinationals investing in the United States, and private equity houses.  As a result, he has significant practical experience with respect to a multitude of tax issues relating to investing in and from the US by multinationals and private investors, including corporate structuring issues, foreign tax credit planning, passive foreign investment companies, treaties and withholding, and cross border financing and licensing issues.  

Tom also has direct experience with the IRS on a multitude of issues, including private letter rulings and other guidance on a range of corporate, international, treaty and withholding issues as well as requests for grants of discretionary treaty benefits from the US competent authority.

Pierfrancesco Mattiolo is a PhD candidate and a graduate teaching and research assistant at the University of Antwerp.

He is conducting his doctoral research on the EU Foreign Subsidies Regulation and its interaction with competition and trade law.

In Antwerp, he teaches substantive EU law to undergraduate students and contributes to the LLM advanced courses on European Economic Regulation and Competition Law.

He is one of the managing editors of the CELIS Blog, an emerging forum for discussing law and economic security.

He has been invited to give seminars and teach at other academic institutions (inter alia, Sciences Po, the University of Bologna, and Zhongnan University of Economics and Law) and to share his expertise with European stakeholders.

Before starting his PhD, he gained experience as a policy assistant trainee at the Trade Policy Unit of the Permanent Representation of Italy to the EU in Brussels, and as an assistant project manager at the School of Policies in Rome. In addition to his academic and professional pursuits, Pierfrancesco collaborates with the Italy-ASEAN Association and ChinaFiles, a leading Italian news agency specialising in Asian affairs, on economic and trade matters. 

Francesca is a Senior Competition Correspondent for POLITICO in Brussels. She has been a competition journalist since 2012, when she joined Policy and Regulatory Report (PaRR).

Francesca spent the first part of her journalism career at various publications in Milan, including Thomson Reuters. She grew up between Italy, Brussels and the UK, and holds a Master of Arts from the College of Europe.

She/he speaks Italian, English and French.

Antonio Nicita is Professor of Economic Policy at LUMSA University (Palermo-Rome) and, since September 2022, Senator of the Italian Republic.

From 2021 to 2022 he was member of the Regulatory Scrutiny Board of the European Commission, while from 2014 to 2020, he was Commissioner of the Italian Communication Authority (AGCOM).

Alongside his academic career, Antonio Nicita has been dealing with a broad arrays of topics in the fileds of regulation, antitrust, law & economics, institutional economics, business theory, digital economy and media, pluralism, and hate-speech, holding positions at the Advisory Board of the Italian Transport Authority (ART), the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Ministry for Technological Innovation (task force on Big Data), the Ministry of Communications (Technical Secretariat), and the Italian Competition Authority (AGCM - Economic Advisor to the President).

Among his most recent publications:

• A. Nicita (2025) Nell'età dell'odio. Sfera pubblica, intolleranza, democrazia, Il Mulino
• C. Cambini, A. Manganelli, G. Napolitano, A. Nicita (2024) Economa e Diritto della Regolazione, Il Mulino,
• A. Manganelli, A. Nicita (2022) Regulating Digital Markets. The European Approach, Palgrave MacMillan 
• A. Nicita (2021) Il Mercato delle Verità. Come la disinformazione minaccia la democrazia, Il Mulino