Weaponising Investments

Jens Hillebrand Pohl is a legal scholar, geographer, and political scientist writing and lecturing at the intersection of law and geoeconomics. An experienced attorney having practiced before U.S. federal and state courts in New York and for EU institutions, Jens researches the (geo)politicization of the legal order. His Ph.D. in law at Maastricht University concerns judicial deference to executive power in national security cases and his second Ph.D. in political science at Tampere University analyzes 'lawfare' and the (mis)use of the legal system as an instrument of geostrategic power. Jens is an adjunct professor (docent) at Maastricht University and the United Nations University, a doctoral fellow of the Institute for Globalization and International Regulation (IGIR), a doctoral research scientist at Tampere University, and an Associate Fellow at the Royal Geographical Society. He is the founding series editor of Springer Studies in Law & Geoeconomics, an advisory editor of the Yearbook of Socio-Economic Constitutions, and a former article editor of the Harvard International Law Journal. He has held visiting appointments at the Max Planck Institute for Procedural Law, T.M.C. Asser Institute, and the World Trade Institute. He holds an LL.M. from Harvard Law School and a MSc in Economics and Business from the Stockholm School of Economics.

Joanna Warchol is legal and political adviser at the Committee on International Trade (INTA) at the European Parliament since 2010. She has been responsible for legislative acts on investment protections, the EU - WTO or OECD relations, better law making as well as proceedings on the conclusion of international free trade agreements aligning to the post-Lisbon decision-making procedures. In 2018 she was a member of the EPs Inter-Institutional negotiation in the team of EP Rapporteur, Franc Proust during trialogue negotiations on the Proposal for a regulation establishing a framework forscreening of foreign direct investment into the EU (Screening of the FDI into the EU). Prior to working in INTA, she was working as a coordinating adviser between the German and Polish Delegation within the EPP Group starting from the German Presidency of the EU in 2007 with Prof. H-G. Poettering until the Polish Presidency working together with Prof. Jerzy Buzek, the first Polish President of the EP. Before joining the Parliament, she has obtained PhD in European Commercial Law at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. She was guest speaker among others: at the German University of Heidelberg, Hamburg and Bonn, in Italy at the Bocconi University in Milan, in Ferrara and in Bologna, in Austria at Vienna University of Economics and Business, as well as at University Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium, University of Luxembourg and in Poland at Jagiellonian University in Krakow. She was as well senior fellow in frame of the DFG, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft at the Ruperto Carola Heidelberg University and in Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg.

Thomas Papadopoulos is an Assistant Professor of Business Law at the Department of Law of the University of Cyprus. He received his DPhil in Law from the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, UK (2010). He received a degree of Magister Juris-MJur (2006) and a degree of MPhil in Law (2007) from the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, UK. He also received his LLB with Distinction (ranked 1st) from the Department of Law, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece (2005). Previously, he was a visiting researcher at Harvard Law School, USA (2009-10). He is also a Visiting Professor at University of Trento and at International Hellenic University, a Teaching Fellow at Open University of Cyprus and an Attorney at law (Greece). Additionally, he was a Visiting Researcher at King's College London and at Max Planck Institute Luxembourg. Moreover, he is a member of the editorial board of European Company Law (ECL) Journal published by Kluwer. He is a country reporter-legal expert for Cyprus at the European Model Company Act (EMCA) Group, the Common European Law on Investment Screening (CELIS) Institute, the Covid-19 Litigation Project of the University of Trento, Italy and research projects of the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI). He is also a member of the academic board of European Banking Institute (EBI). He was awarded the "Cyprus Research Award-Young Researcher (2014)" of the Research Promotion Foundation of the Republic of Cyprus (category of "Social Sciences & Humanities"). His articles were published in many top international law journals. He is also the author of the following monograph published by Kluwer: EU Law and the Harmonization of Takeovers in the Internal Market, 2010, Kluwer. Moreover, he is the editor of the following book published by Springer: Cross-Border Mergers - EU Perspectives and National Experiences,2019, Springer. In February 2023, his 1280 pages book on Cyprus Company Law was published in Greek by Nomiki Vivliothiki publications.

Janosch Wiesenthal is a PhD candidate at the University of Passau currently working on a thesis which focuses on Foreign Investment Screening. He holds a PhD-scholarship from one of the German organizations promoting talent (Begabtenförderungswerke). Janosch is also Deputy Assistant Director of the CELIS Institute, an independent nonprofit, nonpartisan research enterprise dedicated to promoting better regulation of foreign investment in light of security and public order concerns. He co-founded the CELIS Early-Career Scholars' and Practitioners' Network on the Law and Practice of Economic Warfare (CELIS NOW). Formerly, Janosch worked as a research assistant to Prof. Dr. Steffen Hindelang at Uppsala University in Sweden. He completed his law studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin by passing the first state examination(Erstes Staatsexamen). He also studied at the Université Paris II Panthéon-Assas, where he specialised in international law and obtained both the Licence en droit as well as the Maîtrise en droit.