Auke Haagsma is the Director of ICOMP. He specialises in providing strategic advice on European Union law and policy.

Mr. Haagsma assisted some of the world’s largest companies in obtaining approval of major mergers and acquisitions from the European Commission in a variety of sectors including maritime transport, fast moving consumer goods, mining, media and advertising. He also gave advice on competition and intellectual property issues to a large international association of copyrights holders and to companies and associations working in the pharmaceutical sector.

A former European Commission official, Auke Haagsma has more than 28 years of first hand experience in legislative and other procedures on a wide variety of issues. This includes not just his work inside a number of Commission Directorates-General but also working with and lobbying the European Parliament and the Council in order to secure adoption of specific proposals. During the last four years before joining the private sector he was involved in a number of EU Internal Market issues including the services proposal, the European Contract Law Initiative and the European Governance project.

From 1994 through 2000 he was Head of the Unit responsible for reviewing the public procurement regime and promoting electronic procurement via the SIMAP project. He also led the European Union’s delegation to the WTO Committee on public procurement and negotiated a bilateral agreement with Switzerland. Among his responsibilities was also the application of the EU procurement regime to contracts in the defence sector. Before taking on these responsibilities he was a head of unit in the Commission’s Competition Policy directorate-general (DG COMP) where he was in charge of international relations. He negotiated a bilateral agreement with the United States’ antitrust authorities and developed the concept of positive comity.

During the second half of the 1980s Mr. Haagsma was stationed in Washington, D.C., where he was responsible for various trade-related issues in the Commission’s Delegation. In this capacity he lobbied the US Administration and Congress on a broad range of issues, including intellectual and industrial property and export controls. From 1976 until 1986 Mr. Haagsma worked on a large variety of issues in the Commission’s Legal Services, including pharmaceutical products, food safety and labelling, chemicals legislation, transport, environment and consumer protection.

Mr. Haagsma has a law degree from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and a postgraduate degree in European Law from the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium. He taught at Yale University and at the American School of Law at American University in Washington, D.C. In addition to his Dutch mother tongue he is fluent in English, French and German.

ICOMP

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