Executive Committee

Pascal Pichonnaz is currently professor (since 2000) for Swiss contract law, Roman law, as well as European consumer law and comparative contract law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Fribourg. Pichonnaz was Dean of the Faculty of Law from 2014–2017 and published several books on various aspects of contract law (Swiss and comparative law), Roman law, as well as unfair competition and family law. Pichonnaz is also a member of several boards of legal periodicals. He is a standing member of the Jury of the Premio internazionale di diritto romano Gérard Boulvert and is active as an international commercial arbitrator (ICC, Swiss Rules-SCAI, ad hoc). He has been member of the board and then president in 2008–2009 of the European Law Faculties Association (ELFA). He is also currently Chair of the Swiss Federal Commission for Consumers.

Lord John Thomas was a practicing barrister in England and Wales until 1996, a Judge of the High Court and Court of Appeal of England and Wales (1996–2013) and then Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales (2013–2017). He was President of the European Network of Councils of the Judiciary (ENCJ) (2008–2010). He is President of the Qatar International Court, an active member of the Upper House of the UK Parliament, a practicing commercial arbitrator, chairman of a number of legal committees in London, Chancellor of Aberystwyth University, an Honorary Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and a Fellow of the Universities of Bangor, Cardiff and Swansea. He is one of ELI’s Founding Members. 

Anne Birgitte Gammeljord is a practising Danish Supreme Court lawyer. She is assistant lawyer in insolvency matters at the Maritime and Commercial Court in Denmark. She previously served on the Disciplinary Committee of the Danish Bar and Law Society and as a member of the Council of the Danish Bar and Law Society. She was President of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE) in 2009 and has been a Member of the ELI Council and its Membership Committee since 2012.

Pietro Sirena is a Full Professor at Bocconi University. He has been Dean of Bocconi University’s School of Law since 2018. He is a director of the Società Italiana per la Ricerca nel Diritto Comparato-SIRD (since 2014), member of the Executive Board of the Society of European Contract Law (SECOLA) (since 2011), co-editor of the European Contract Law and Theory series (Intersentia) and Cultura giuridica e rapporti giuridici (Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane). Sirena is a member of several associations and boards of journals.

Bénédicte Fauvarque-Cosson was appointed General Administrator of the French Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (CNAM) in September 2022. She is a member of the Conseil d'Etat in Paris and a former Professor of Law at the University Panthéon-Assas.  She was Vice-President of the ELI and is also the co-founder and Chair of the ELI French Hub. Fauvarque-Cosson is former President of the Société de Législation Comparée as well as a former Vice-President of the International Academy of Comparative Law. She was a special counsellor for Vice-President and Commissioner Viviane Reding (2011–2014).

Teresa Rodríguez de las Heras Ballell is arbitrator at the Madrid Court of Arbitration and the Spanish Court of Arbitration, member of the Spanish Advertising Standards Tribunal (Autocontrol), Member of the European Commission Expert Group on Liability and New Technologies, member of European Union Expert Group for the Observatory on the Online Platform Economy, Delegate for Spain before UNIDROIT and UNCITRAL Working Group VI on Security Interests, and member nominated by UNIDROIT of the Expert Study Group on a Fourth Protocol for the Cape Town Convention on International Security Interests.

Aneta Wiewiórowska-Domagalska holds a Law degree from Warsaw University and PhD from Utrecht University. While in Utrecht, she was involved in the work of the Study Group on a European Civil Code (co-author of Principles of European Law on Sales, nationally reported for other Dutch groups). In 2008–2014, she worked as a chief specialist for the Polish Ministry of Justice, where she was involved in preparing and conducting legislative proposals in the private law area as well as negotiating private law instruments in the European Council (she chaired the Council working group on CESL during the Polish Presidency). As a member of various working groups of the Polish Civil Law Codification Commission, she was one of the persons responsible for the transposition of the Consumer Rights Directive and the re-transposition of Consumer Sales Directive in Poland. Since 2015, she has been preparing her Habilitation thesis at the European Legal Studies Institute. She is also one of the Reporters of the ELI’s Model Rules on Online Intermediary Platforms project. She has vast experience in the law-making process, as well as in the transposition and implementation evaluation of EU law. Recently she prepared several reports for the European Parliament in these areas.