EU Visiting Fellows

Each year, the Program hosts as a Visiting Fellow a member of the European Union institutions, e.g., European Commission or European Parliament. The Fellow is selected on a competitive basis by the European Commission, based on criteria we communicate to the Commission each year. In general, the Fellow is someone who has expertise in some aspect of the Social Sciences or the Law.

Lucio Gussetti (2022-2023)

Lucio Gussetti is a senior Manager and Principal Legal Advisor of the European Commission on International Law and on the Relations of the EU with the World.
In his over 30 years as an EU official, his primary area of expertise has been International Law applied to EU Law, whose primary legal challenges concern the nature of the EU as an independent actor on the international stage – including negotiations of international agreements and treaties – and the constitutional relations between the EU and its Member States. 
Mr. Gussetti represented the EU in court actions before the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg and before the WTO Dispute Settlement bodies in Geneva; he supervised team in judicial actions and interventions on behalf of the EU before foreign and international Courts including the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea in Hamburg, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, and the United States Supreme Court. Mr. Gussetti has represented the EU for over a decade in the Sixth Committee of the UN General Assembly in New York and in the Commission for Democracy through Law of the Council of Europe in Venice.
João Rodrigues

João Rodrigues (2016-2017)

João Rodrigues was a Portuguese national and a senior member of the Legal Service of the European Parliament.  He studied law at the University of Lisbon (Portugal), and European Law and Studies at the University of Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne, and the University of Nancy (France). After a short spell in the Legal Department of the Portuguese Civil Aviation Authority, he joined the EU institutions as a lawyer-linguist in the European Court of Justice. Mr. Rodrigues entered the Legal Service of the European Parliament in 2004, where he works in the areas of energy, telecommunications, environment, public health, and food safety. His job is to provide legal advice during the legislative decision-making procedure and also to defend, before the EU courts, legislation adopted by the European Parliament – mostly together with the Council. He has participated in several conferences and been invited to present different subjects of EU law at the European Institute of Public Administration and the Academy of European Law.

While at Yale, Mr. Rodrigues researched the role of the precautionary principle in risk regulation, notably in the area of chemicals and genetically-modified organisms. 

Georg Fischer

Georg Fischer (2015-2016)

Georg Fischer was on leave from his job as the analysis/evaluation Director at the Employment and Social Policy Department of the European Commission. He is a labor economist who, before joining the EU, worked for the Austrian Finance and Labour ministries in Vienna, the OECD in Paris, the Social Science Center Berlin and the Economic Cooperation Foundation in Tel Aviv.

Mr. Fischer’s main research interests are integration and divergence in the US labor market and welfare system as a source for reflection on how the EU can achieve a higher degree of labour market and social convergence - increasingly seen as condition for the long term sustainability of the European Economic and Monetary Union. He is also interested in EU and US relations and in exchanges with students and scholars on European affairs and developments.

Bernhard Schima

Bernhard Schima (2013-2014)

Mr. Schima is an Austrian and a member of the Legal Service of the European Commission.  He studied law at the University of Vienna, received an LL.M. from Harvard, and served as a lawyer in the constitutional office of the Austrian Federal Chancellery and then for eight years in the chambers of one of the judges of the European Court of Justice.  In 2003, he joined the Legal Service of the Commission, where he has been involved with the internal market and agriculture. While at Yale, he studied the constitutional issues related to the EU – in particular, EU law pertaining to Fundamental Rights.

Ewoud Sakkers

Ewoud Sakkers (2012-2013)

Mr. Sakkers is Dutch and completed his undergraduate studies at Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht in the Netherlands after which he received an L.L.M. degree in European law from the College d’ Europe in Bruges.  He entered the European Commission in 1993.  After four years in the Directorate-General for Trade, he joined the Directorate-General for Competition, where he served as a member of its Merger Task Force.  Subsequently, he was a case officer, case manager, and deputy Head of Unit of DG-Competition’s unit on Basic Industries and Cartels.  In 2006, he became the Head of Unit for Cartels and in 2010 the Head of Unit for Policy and Strategy Directorate of the European Competition Network within DG-Competition.  He has published a number of journal articles on European competition policy and has co-authored The European Cartel Digest (Kluwer Law International, 2008) and co-edited The EC Law of Competition (Oxford University Press, 3rd edition forthcoming in 2013).  He has also frequently lectured on European competition policy and has taught courses at several European universities on European competition law.

Alexander Winterstein

Alexander Winterstein (2011-2012)

He is an Austrian citizen, has advanced degrees in European law, and has been a member of the European Commission for the past 13 years.  He specializes in competition policy and has held a number of positions within the competition directorate.  Most recently, he served as a deputy head of unit and then assistant to the Director-General for state aid.  Mr. Winterstein will participate in the activities of the Program and will be available for consultation with faculty and students.

Tassos Belessiotis

Tassos Belessiotis (2010-2011)

Tassos Belessiotis is an Economic Adviser in the Bureau of European Policy Advisers of the European Commission of the European Union. After completing his Diploma in Economics and Political Science at the University of Athens, he received an M.A. in Economics from the School of Economic Studies of the University of Leeds in the UK and a Ph.D. in Economics from McMaster University in Canada. After working for several years as an economist for the Ontario and Canadian Federal governments, he joined the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs.

Within the Commission, he has served as a principal administrator and economist in the national economies directorate and, subsequently, the directorate for the evaluation and surveillance of budgetary and economic policy, deputy head of unit of the national economies directorate, head of unit in the Resources Directorate of the Directorate-General for Budget, and head of unit in the Enterprise Policy Directorate of the Directorate General for Enterprise. An Economic Adviser in the Bureau of European Policy Advisers for the past five years, he has been responsible for preparing studies on the EU’s competitiveness, the on-going enlargement process and, most recently, the economic and financial crisis in Europe.

 

Wolfgang Plasa (2009-2010)

Wolfgang Plasa served as a Counsellor in the European Commission’s Directorate-General for External Relations. Mr. Plasa has held a number of positions in the Trade, Development, and External Relations Directorates of the Commission. He served for seven years in the Commission’s Delegation in Geneva, where he was involved in trade negotiations in the framework of the Uruguay Round and then as the representative of the Commission in UNCTAD. Subsequently, he served as charge d’affaires in the Commission’s Delegation in Beirut and as Director of UNRWA Affairs in Lebanon. Prior to becoming Counsellor in DG RELEX last year, Mr. Plasa served for four years as the head of the Commission’s Delegation to Chile and for two years as the head of its Delegation to Algeria. He will be teaching a graduate course in the Spring semester on “Contemporary Challenges Facing the European Union.”

 

Marco Fantini (2008-2009)

After completing his studies in international economics at Bocconi University in Milan, where he also worked at the Institute for Stock Exchange Studies, Mr Fantini was recruited by Barclays Bank, industrial credit department. In 1994, he joined the European Commission, Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs, where he was responsible for the economic analysis of Germany (1994-1999) and subsequently of Russia, Moldova and Belarus (1999-2004). Since2005, he has been working on EU tax policy at the Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs, where he is Head of the sector dealing with quantitative analysis. Mr. Fantini has published a book on the interplay of national strategies, alliances and interests within the EU and papers on the Russian economy, on EU-Russia relations and on EU relations with neighboring countries (the EU Neighborhood Policy). He has taught courses on EU policy at various Moscow universities. Mr Fantini’s course at Yale is titled “the European Union’s contemporary challenges” and covers all the EU’s most important policies. It will run until the end of December 2008.

Mary McCarthy

Mary McCarthy (2007-2008)

Mrs. McCarthy is an Irish citizen who, after completing her B.A. and M.A. degrees in Ireland, received the Ph.D. in Economics from New York University in 1985. Since 1991, she has served as an Administrator, Head of Unit, and Economic Adviser in the Commission’s directorate for economics and finance. She has worked extensively on European monetary issues, Economic and Monetary Union, the euro, and coordination of economic and monetary policy among the member states. While at Yale, she conducted research on the topic of convergence of the economies of the Central and Eastern European member states of the EU and their prospects for membership in the euro area.

 

Francesco Tonon Meggiolaro (2006-2007)

He is a member of Commission’s directorate dealing with trade. Francesco has been involved in many of the EU’s most complex trade negotiations, including those with Russia dealing with oil and gas as well as those with countries in Latin America. While at Yale, he gave lectures on the EU’s trade policy and the growing trade and financial relationship between the EU and Russia and the EU’s growing energy dependence on oil and gas exports from Russia. He also taught a course on the EU for students in the M.A. in International Relations program.

Peter Oliver

Peter Oliver (2005-2006)

During the 2005-06 academic year, Peter Oliver of the European Commission’s Legal Service held the annual European Commission Visiting Fellowship. Mr. Oliver, who received his legal training at Cambridge, serves as a Legal Advisor in the Commission. For the past five years, he has been assigned to Competition (anti-trust and mergers) and has represented the Commission in cases involving air transport and other sectors before the European Court of Justice and the Court of First Instance. He also is responsible for institutional matters in the Competition Team of the Legal Service and in that capacity participated in the drafting of the competition provisions of the EU Constitutional Treaty. He has published more than 50 articles on a variety of topics involving the internal market, anti-trust and mergers, and rights of action before national courts for the enforcement of Community law rights. In addition, he is the author of Free Movement of Goods in the European Community, which is now in its fourth edition. During 2005-06, he will be teaching an International Relations course on “Contemporary Challenges Facing the European Union.”

 

Richard Cawley (2004-2005)

Mr. Cawley is a specialist in the regulation of telecommunications and electronic communications in the Commission. He currently serves as the head of section dealing with the economic aspects of electronic communications regulation in the Directorate General for the Information Society of the European Commission. Previously, he served for several years as the head of the section dealing with forward analysis and universal service in the same directorate and, prior to that, he served in DG Telecommunications, Research, and Innovation, and DG Economics and Financial Affairs. He did his undergraduate studies in mathematics and economics at Leicester University in the U.K. and received an M.A. degree in Economics from Simon Fraser University in Canada . He is currently completing a Ph.D. in Economics at the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands.

Denis Chaibi

Denis Chaibi (2003-2004)

Mr. Chaibi did his undergraduate studies at ULB (Brussels) and received a Master’s degree in International Law from ULB in 1991. He received Master’s degrees in Political Science and European Studies from UCL (Louvain) in 1992 and a Master in Law degree in International Trade and European Law from Cambridge University in 1993. In 1993-95, he joined the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and served in a variety of diplomatic posts. In 1995, he joined the Commission and worked until 1999 on trade defense instruments in DG Trade. In 2000, he was appointed the first secretary and deputy head of the European Commission Delegation in Nicosia, Cyprus.

Thierry Vissol

Thierry Vissol (2002-2003)

Trained as an economist, Dr. Vissol has specialized within the Commission on economic and monetary matters including, most recently, Economic and Monetary Union and the introduction of the euro. Dr. Vissol taught two courses: a senior seminar for the Department of Economics entitled “The European Union: Economic and Structural Policies” and a graduate course for the M.A. in International Relations program entitled “Building European Monetary Power” in the spring semester.

Carola Maggiulli

Carola Maggiulli (2002-2003)

A specialist in taxation policy, Ms. Maggiulli has worked in the Commission on the coordination of taxation and Internal Market, serving most recently as the principal administrator of the unit charged with the coordination of tax matters in the Directorate General for Taxation and Customs Union.

Brian McDonald

Brian McDonald (2001-2002)

During the spring semester, Mr. McDonald taught a graduate seminar on “International Trade Policies and the World Trade Organization.”

Alejandro Herrero Molina

Alejandro Herrero Molina (2001-2000)

Dr. Alejandro Herrero Molina taught a graduate seminar for the M.A. in International Relations and Epidemiology & Public Health programs on the role of scientific research in EU policymaking.

Auke Haagsma

Auke Haagsma (1999-2000)

Mr. Auke Haagsma taught a graduate seminar on “European Integration: Legal Foundations of Supranational Authority and Shared Sovereignty.”