Programme

The course covers the main legal aspects of negotiating, drafting and implementing international commercial transactions, starting with a general update on international contracts law (including conflicts of laws), the usual content of international commercial contracts and how they are negotiated.  We then dig into the specifics of international sales contracts, corporate transactions, distribution, agency and franchising contracts, transportation, construction and turnkey projects, as well as collaboration and consortium contracts, in each case looking at (international) applicable rules (including a comparative approach), conflicts of laws and usual content (including through case studies).

Professors: Paul Hermant & Erik Van den Haute

This course focuses on the EU competition law regime comparing and contrasting it with the US antitrust system. The EU and the US antitrust systems have served as a model for the antitrust laws enacted by more than one hundred countries around the world.

The course will start with an overview of the institutional and procedural design and the substantive competition law concepts applied by the EU Commission and Courts and their US counterparts.

The course will then cover the practices subject to competition rules with a particular emphasis on cartels, horizontal cooperation, vertical restraints, abuses of dominance and mergers. One specific feature of the course will be its analysis and discussion of actual competition cases drawing on the practical experience of its Professor.

Professors: Patrick Bock & David Hull

This course contains two distinct parts: 1)  International Company Law and 2) International Taxation.

International Company Law aims to provide students with an in-depth understanding of key topics of international company law. It focuses on the different approaches across certain jurisdictions to certain basic corporate concepts and on the corporate principles that apply to multi-national corporate groups and on cross-border mobility of corporations. Key topics include: legal personality (recognition, denial, …), the case for or against legal capital (illustrated by the opposition between European and US rules), multinational corporate groups and the issue of the liability of the parent for its subsidiaries (including corporate accountability for environmental hazards), cross-border conversions, mergers and divisions and regulatory competition. Throughout the course, it will be examined how minority shareholders, creditors and employees are protected. The usefulness of European legal forms (such as the Societas Europaea) will be discussed and it will be examined whether a bottom-up approach is an acceptable or desirable substitute to top-down harmonization in Europe. This approach will enable students to understand, analyze and use foreign corporate structures.

International Taxation is intended to acquaint students with the main tax issues that multi-national enterprises may face and the legal instruments and mechanisms designed to solve these issues. Special emphasize will be given to international tax treaties and the rationale of their provisions. The topics that are covered in the course include the following:

• Prerequisite: Fundamentals of Accountancy
• Fundamentals of International Tax Law
• Scope of the International Tax Treaties
• Taxation of Business Profits
• Taxation of Personal Services Income
• Taxation of Investment Income

Professors: Valérie Simonart & Caroline Docclo

The first part of the course is focused on trade law.  The objective is to provide students with a structured and dynamic understanding of international trade regulation and its relevance for governments and business. It will teach the students how business operators can take advantage of the rights and obligations accruing to Governments under the trading system, the typology of trade disputes and the procedures available to solve trade disputes.

The World Trade Organization is a remarkable institution. It has jurisdiction over a wide range of international economic activity – trade in goods and services, and intellectual property rights (though not investment).  In addition to the WTO, trade law is governed by a vast array of regional and bilateral free trade agreements. Several of them – the so-called “new generation agreements” – also contain investment-related provisions and they provide for their own dispute resolution system.

The course will start with a discussion of why countries trade, and of the origins and achievements of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the WTO’s predecessor.  We will then spend time on the WTO and the substantive rules contained in the various WTO agreements as well as the WTO dispute settlement system.  We will then highlight the major differences with the regional and bilateral trade and investment agreements.  Finally, through case studies, we will explain how the dispute settlement provisions of the various agreements are actually used and provide insights on their practical functioning.

The second part of the course covers substantive and procedural aspect of international investment law. The course will familiarize students with standards of protection commonly found in international investment treaties. Similarly, the course will provide an introduction to the procedure of investor-State arbitration, notably under the ICSID Convention and the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules. It will also consider the complex relationship of international investment law with other areas of international law. Finally, the course will critically examine the legitimacy of international investment law in light of current attempts to reform the system.

Professors:David Luff & Nicolas Angelet

This course aims to provide students with a workable knowledge of EU Copyright, Neighboring Rights, Trademark and Design, as well as a general overview of some of the issues raised by overlaps of these IP rights, the impact thereon of new technologies and international protection of these rights.

At the end of this course, students will be familiar with the main features of each of these IP rights. In addition, they will be familiar with the most frequent issues arising in running a business (online or offline) based on supplying goods or providing services that are protected by these IP rights.

The course will also address the challenges raised by Artificial Intelligence and the development of e-commerce, notably from the point of view of intellectual property enforcement and unfair commercial practices, with a focus on the ongoing Digital Single market reforms. Finally the course will provide students with a workable knowledge of the EU legal framework on (personal) data and in particular the GDPR, the Data Act and the Digital Services Act.

Professors: Julien Cabay & Benoit Van Asbroeck