ECB Legal Conference 2023 – Speakers

Conference programme

Currently, she holds a position as a postdoctoral researcher and has been based at the World Trade Institute, University of Bern. Her ongoing research project is financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Over the past years, Dr Bogdanova has published contributions analysing various aspects of economic statecraft, mostly focusing on economic sanctions, their effectiveness and legality under international law. Her recent book explores the legality of unilateral economic sanctions, i.e. those imposed by individual states without authorization of the United Nations Security Council, under international law. One of her latest academic projects is to analyse the possibility of using frozen Russian assets (belonging to the Central Bank and private individuals) for funding Ukraine’s reconstruction efforts and the legality of such a move.

Iryna earned her PhD degree (Summa cum Laude) from the Faculty of Law of the University of Berne. Prior to this, she pursued legal studies in Ukraine, Switzerland, Canada and the Netherlands. Dr Bogdanova's previous working experiences are diverse and range from private sector employment to work in international organisations.

She works at the Fiscal and Financial Unit of the IMF’s Legal Department, which provides legal advice to member countries on the design and implementation of legal reforms, including those related to central banking, payment systems, financial markets, and financial institutions. 

Previously, she was a lawyer at the Central Bank of Brazil for over twenty years, advising on issues concerning monetary policy, payment systems, management of foreign reserves, central-bank governance, fintech, digital currencies, and central banks’ role in the green transition. She also worked as a litigator representing the Central Bank in federal courts.

Juliana is admitted to practice law in Brazil and New York and is a member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (CIArb). She holds an LL.M. in international dispute resolution from the University of London and an LL.M. from Duke University, where she is currently a doctoral candidate. Her academic work focuses on the contours of central-bank independence and the evolution of central banks’ legal mandates.

She teaches several courses on financial regulation and organises quarterly legal “Clinics on European Financial Law” for LL.M students and legal practitioners on topical financial law subjects. She is the chairof the Securities and Markets Stakeholders Group (SMSG) advising ESMA and a member of the Belgian Resolution Authority. Formerly she has been a member of the Sanctions Commission of the Belgian Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA). Before joining academia, she was an attorney at the Brussels’ Bar. She has published numerous contributions on financial regulation and is a regular speaker at international and national conferences. Her main research interests relate to investor protection, sustainable finance, Banking Union, and the interplay between different legal frameworks.

She advises clients and supports legal colleagues across all functions of the Bank leading a dedicated group of climate and environmental lawyers embedded within each division of the Legal Directorate providing a centre of excellence on legal climate and environmental issues relevant to the Bank.

Anne has joined international colleagues in discussions on climate issues within the Legal Experts Group of the Central Bank Network for Greening the Financial System and in conjunction with the International Monetary Fund. She has arranged a cross-organisational Climate Summit of UK regulators and central government departments on the legal aspects of the UK’s climate agenda for financial services and has spoken at the presentation of London School of Economics influential report on Global Trends in Climate Litigation.

Anne’s career has centred in public service. She has acted as an advisory lawyer for the Department of Culture Media and Sport, the Department of Work and Pensions, HM Treasury and the Financial Services Authority before joining the Bank in 2013.

In this capacity he is also a member of the Executive Board, the Governing Council and the General Council of the ECB.

From 2011 to 2016 he was Spain’s Minister of Economy and Competitiveness, and from 2016 to 2018 he was Minister of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness. Previously, from 2002 to 2004, he was Secretary of State for Economic Affairs and a member of the Economic and Financial Committee of the EU. Prior to that, he was Secretary General for Economic and Competition Policy (2000-02) and Director General for Economic and Competition Policy (1996-2000).

Mr de Guindos was Head of Financial Services at PricewaterhouseCoopers (2008-09) and Director, IE Business School and PwC Center for the Finance Sector (2010-11). He was Chief Executive Officer Iberia at Lehman Brothers and Chief Executive Officer at Nomura Securities (2006-08).

He received a BSc in Economics from Colegio Universitario de Estudios Financieros (CUNEF) in Spain in 1982 and graduated as State Economist and Trade Expert in 1984.

Born in 1963 in Asti (Italy), Mr Di Bucci studied law at the Università degli Studi di Torino (University of Turin, Italy), where he obtained a Master's degree in law in 1986. He continued his studies at the université de Nancy II (University of Nancy II, France) where he obtained a postgraduate degree in Community law in 1988.

In 1987, Mr Di Bucci joined the Court of Justice as a lawyer-linguist in the Italian translation unit. In 1988, he was recruited by Judge G. Federico Mancini as Legal Secretary within his chambers, a position he held until 1991. He was Legal Secretary to Judge Mancini again between 1994 and 2000.

Between 1991 and 1994, Mr Di Bucci was a member of the Transport, Environment and Consumer team of the Legal Service of the European Commission, an institution which he joined again in 2000 as a member of the State Aids and Dumping team of its Legal Service. Between 2007 and 2010, he was a member of, and then Legal Adviser in, the Competition team. In 2010, he was appointed Principal Legal Adviser in the State Aids and Dumping Team and held the same position in the Business Law Team from 2014 to 2023.

He is the author of various publications on EU law, in particular on proceedings before the EU Courts, State Aid and EU banking law.

He oversees the ECB’s Legal Services and is Vice-Chair of the ECB’s Supervisory Board.

Mr Elderson previously served as Executive Director of De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB). At DNB he held several senior positions before joining its Governing Board in 2011.

Frank Elderson co-chairs the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Risks of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. From January 2018 to January 2022 he served as the first Chair of the newly founded Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System.

Mr Elderson studied various courses at the University of Zaragoza, Spain. He graduated in Dutch law at the University of Amsterdam in 1994 and obtained an LL.M. Degree at Columbia Law School, New York, in 1995.

Following his post-graduate studies at the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud in the humanities and social sciences section, and after acquiring experience in several branches of the French civil service, Edouard Fernandez-Bollo joined the Banque de France in 1988. There he held various positions related to banking regulation and licensing, European harmonisation and banking resolution issues.

Mr Fernandez-Bollo became General Counsel of the Commission Bancaire, the French supervisory authority, in 2004 and Deputy Secretary General in 2008. From 2007 to 2020 he was Chair of the Basel Committee’s expert group on anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism. From 2010 to 2013 he was Deputy Secretary General of the new Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de résolution (ACPR), the integrated French prudential supervisor, and from 2014 to August 2019 he was Secretary General of the ACPR, a member of the Management Board of the European Banking Authority and a member of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision.

She was previously a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellow at the Law School of Sciences Po, Paris and an Assistant Professor in EU law at the Universities of Maastricht and Utrecht, The Netherlands. Her research focuses on the Economic and Monetary Union and especially the Banking Union, as well as on democracy within the EU.

She is furthermore a replacement judge at the Amsterdam Court of Appeal and is on leave from the European Commission.

She has published widely on a range of substantive and constitutional aspects of EU law and the process of European integration. She is interested in the legitimacy of authority in the EU, and has in that context investigated themes such as the imbalance between social and economic rights, the division of competences between the EU and the Member States and the constitutionalisation of EU law. She is General Editor of the OUP Online Encyclopedia of EU Law, and contributes to leading EU law handbooks and legal commentaries.

She is a graduate from Maastricht University, holds an LLM from the College of Europe and a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence.

Prof. Dr. Stephan Harbarth studied law at Heidelberg University from 1991 to 1996. From 1997 to 1999, he completed his legal traineeship at the Berlin Higher Regional Court. He obtained his doctorate (Dr. jur.) from Heidelberg University in 1998. He attended Yale Law School from 1999 to 2000 and obtained a Master of Laws (LL.M.).

Stephan Harbarth was admitted to the German bar in 2000. From 2000 to 2018, he practised as a lawyer. From 2009 to 2018, he was a member of the German Bundestag. Since 2018, he has been an honorary professor at the Faculty of Law of Heidelberg University.

In November 2018, Stephan Harbarth was appointed Vice-President of the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) and presiding Justice of the First Senate.

Born in 1977 in Dublin (Ireland), Ms Suzanne Kingston graduated in law from Oxford University (United Kingdom) in 1998 and obtained a master’s degree in law at Universiteit Leiden (University of Leiden, Netherlands) in 2000. She then began to study for a doctorate in law at that university, and defended her thesis there in 2009.

In 1998, she was admitted as a Barrister at the Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn, London (United Kingdom). In 2002, she joined the Brussels office of an international law firm where she practised law until 2004.

Ms Kingston subsequently joined the Court of Justice of the European Union as a legal secretary to Advocate General Leendert Geelhoed, with whom she worked from 2004 to 2006.

Ms Kingston was admitted to serve as a Barrister at the Honourable Society of King’s Inns, Dublin (Ireland) in 2007. She has practised law at the Bar of Ireland since 2007 as a Barrister, then as a Senior Counsel.

In addition, Ms Kingston taught law at the University College Dublin (Ireland) as a senior lecturer from 2007 to 2015, then, from 2015, as professor. During her academic career, she also taught at other universities, in particular at Columbia University (United States), Cambridge University (United Kingdom), Universiteit Leiden, and Osgoode Hall Law School of York University in Toronto (Canada). She is the author of numerous publications in EU law.

He is responsible for the Directorate General Economics and the Directorate General Monetary Policy. Before joining the ECB, he was the Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland. He has also chaired the Advisory Scientific Committee and Advisory Technical Committee of the European Systemic Risk Board and was Whately Professor of Political Economy at Trinity College Dublin. He is also a research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research. A graduate of Trinity College Dublin, he was awarded a PhD in Economics from Harvard University in 1995 and was Assistant Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Columbia University from 1995 to 1997, before returning to Dublin. In 2001 he was the inaugural recipient of the Bernácer Prize for outstanding contributions to European monetary economics.

He oversees the day-to-day operations of the group, which include Legal, Compliance, Bank Applications, Group Operations and Strategy, and Records Management. He is also a member of the Bank’s Executive Committee and serves as deputy general counsel of the Federal Open Market Committee.

Mr. Ostrander joined the New York Fed in 2022. He previously was a managing director in Legal & Compliance at BlackRock, where he oversaw legal coverage of trading activities and technology products. He also served as a member of several risk and oversight committees and was a champion of L&C’s diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

Prior to joining BlackRock in 2011, Mr. Ostrander was a managing director at Morgan Stanley, responsible for global legal coverage of the firm’s fixed income division. He started his legal career as an associate at Cleary Gottlieb in 1995

Mr. Ostrander holds a bachelor’s degree from Hamilton College, an MBA from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, and a JD from Stanford Law School.

He is a member ad personam of the Academic Board of the European Banking Institute, where he leads its Working Group on Finance, Climate Change and Sustainability, and a member of the European Law Institute.

His research encompasses fields like finance, climate change and sustainability, banking crises, and the role of general principles of law in financial architecture, including central banking, supervision or bank insolvency and resolution. He has also conducted research on Private Law and dispute resolution. 

As part of his non-research activities he is currently an alternate member of the Appeal Panel of the Single resolution Board, the Joint Board of Appeal of the European Supervisory Authorities, provides advice to the European Parliament on matters of bank resolution, and is part of the UNIDROIT Working Group on Bank Insolvency.

He holds degrees in Law and Business Administration, and a PhD from the University of Bologna.

She graduated in law from the University of Bologna in 1982 and achieved a PhD in European law. She is currently on leave from the academic position of Full Professor of European law at the University of Bologna where she was also the Director of the International Research Centre on European law. She has been a Visiting Professor and Visiting Lecturer in many universities worldwide and is currently teaching at College of Europe in Bruges.

She became a Lawyer at the Bologna Bar in 1985. She is also a Member of several Scientific Councils and Boards as well as the author of more than 130 academic publications in various fields of EU law.

Born in 1974 in Barcelona (Spain), Mr Miguel Sampol Pucurull graduated in law in 1997 and, in 1998, in business administration at the Universidad Pontificia Comillas – ICADE (Comillas Pontifical University, Spain).

He began his career as Abogado del Estado: from 2002 to 2005, he represented the State before Spanish courts before joining, from 2005 to 2006, the Legal Service of the Spanish Ministry of Culture. From 2006 to 2007, he joined the Legal Service of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs responsible for matters relating to the Court of Justice of the European Union.

From 2007 to 2014, Mr Sampol Pucurull held the post of Abogado del Estado-Legal Adviser to the Spanish Permanent Representation to the European Union. In 2014, he began to work for the Spanish Ministry of Justice as Deputy Director-General for EU and International Affairs at the Abogacía General del Estado (State Legal Service). In that capacity, he served at the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation as Head Abogado del Estado of the State Legal Service responsible for cases before the Court of Justice of the European Union until 2019. During that period, he was also a member of the board of directors of a number of state-owned undertakings and his practice of law led to the writing of numerous legal publications.

She is currently on leave from the University of Bonn, where she has been Professor of Financial Economics since 2015. From 2014 to 2019 she served as a member of the German Council of Economic Experts, and in 2019 she was CoChair of the Franco-German Council of Economic Experts. She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Mannheim. Her academic work focuses on financial stability, banking regulation, international capital flows and economic history.

Alexander Thiele studied law at the University of Göttingen. He received his doctor’s degree in 2006 with a thesis that analysed possible deficits of judicial protection within the European Union, especially as regards the (private) action for annulment. During his following legal traineeship in Hamburg he also joined the European Commission as stagiaire atypique (DG Competition) in Brussels.

After passing his second state exam in 2008 he rejoined the University of Göttingen as a postdoc and began working on his habilitation thesis concerning financial supervision. His research has since then focused on democratic and state theory as well as on the Economic and Monetary Union including institutional aspects of the ECB.

He is full professor at the Law Faculty of the BSP Business and Law School in Berlin since 2021 and regularly holds lectures in Constitutional and European Law. He has published several books including a history of the modern state, an introduction to constitutional history and a textbook on the general theory of state. An introduction to the German Constitution is due to be published at the end of 2023.

His key publications include two CUP monographs, The Eurozone crisis - A constitutional analysis (2014) and The European Central Bank and the European Macroeconomic Constitution: From Ensuring Stability to Fighting Crises (2022).

He started his career as a monetary policy economist that culminated in Frankfurt during the designing phase of the ECB and the first two years of the euro. Before returning to academia, he worked extensively in the financial sector, focusing on asset management and sovereign debt markets.

His research focuses on the governance of financial markets, with a specific focus on how climate change and new macroprudential ideas are reshaping the fields of monetary policy and banking supervision. His research is multidisciplinary in orientation and his work has appeared in journals such as Journal of Politics, Review of International Political Economy, Political Theory, and Journal of Common Market Studies. His most recent publication is 'New strategy, new accountability: The European Central Bank and the European Parliament after the strategy review' (Common Market Law Review; with Seraina Grünewald) Jens holds a PhD in Philosophy (University of Cambridge, 2018) and in Economic policy (University of Groningen, 2021). Before joining the UvA, he was a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence (2018-2019) and a FWO Postdoctoral Fellow at KU Leuven (2019-2022). He is currently also a visiting fellow at LSE’s The Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.

She advises the IMF’s Executive Board, management, staff and country membership on all legal aspects of the IMF’s operations, including its lending, regulatory and advisory functions. Over her career at the IMF, she has led the Legal Department’s work on a wide range of significant policy and country matters. She has also lectured and written articles and many IMF Board papers on all aspects of the law of the IMF.

Ms. Weeks-Brown also served as Deputy Director in the IMF’s Communications Department, where she led IMF communications and outreach in Africa, Asia and Europe; played a key role in the transformation of the IMF’s communications strategy; and led IMF strategic communications on key legal and policy topics.

Ms. Weeks-Brown has a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a B.A. in Economics (summa cum laude) from Howard University. Before joining the IMF, she worked in a large corporate law firm in Washington DC. She is member of the Bar in New York, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia and a member of the Supreme Court Bar. She is also a member of the Committee on International Monetary Law of the International Law Association (MOCOMILA), and the Consultative Group for the Sovereign Debt Forum. Ms. Weeks-Brown serves on the Boards of TalentNomics, Inc., a non-profit organization focused on developing women leaders globally, and Results for America, a non-profit organization working to improve outcomes for communities through results-driven social programs. She was named one of the top 27 Global General Counsels (2020) by the Financial Times, and one of the top 5 General Counsels in the area of Promoting Ethical Standards.

Under her tenure, the IMF Legal Department has been short-listed for two Financial Times Awards, for Innovation in Strategic and Risk Advice and Most Innovative In-House Legal Team in North America.

Her influential scholarship on foreign sovereign immunity has appeared in leading journals and she has advised governments and private parties on many immunity-related topics, especially central bank immunity.

She currently serves as co-editor-in-chief of the American Journal of International Law and as a member of the American Law Institute. She was named as a Reporter for the Restatement (Fourth) of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States and has received numerous honours and fellowships, including the Morehead Scholarship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a Fulbright Senior Scholar award, the German Chancellor's Fellowship, election to the German Society of International Law, election to the Order of the Coif, and many teaching awards. She is a contributing editor at Lawfare and a founding editor of the Transnational Litigation Blog.

She is also an adjunct professor at the University of Zurich and a professor at Kalaidos University of Applied Sciences. Prior to that, she served as an associate professor of banking and financial law at the University of Geneva. She researches in the fields of monetary and central banking law and private law. She is particularly interested in cross-disciplinary issues between private and financial market law, the influence of digitization on public as well as private money, payment systems and the financial market, and in the consequences of insolvency on crypto assets. Among others she is a member of an interdisciplinary research group recently set up by TA Swiss on the subject of the digital franc and a member of the Steering Committee to the UNIDROIT Digital Assets and Private Law Working Group.

In 1989 she joined the Legal Service of the Council of Ministers in Brussels, moving to the Legal Service of the European Monetary Institute in 1995 and subsequently to the ECB as Head of Division in Legal Services in 1998, where she was appointed Director General in 2013.

Ms Zilioli holds an LLM from Harvard Law School and a PhD from the European University Institute. Since 1994 she lectures at Goethe University Frankfurt, at its Institute for Law and Finance and at the European College of Parma, Parma University. In 2016 she was appointed Professor of Law at Goethe University Frankfurt. She has published numerous articles and four books. She is also a member of the Parma Bar Association.

Chiara Zilioli has been married to Andreas Fabritius for more than 30 years; they have four children.