Claus Zimmermann is a partner in our antitrust, regulation and foreign investment team and leads the firm's international and EU trade litigation, policy and regulatory practice
Claus advises governments, trade associations and enterprises from around the world on all aspects of EU foreign trade and regulatory law, general public international law as well as on international economic law, especially WTO law and free trade agreements. The main focus of his practice since 2011 has been to assist clients navigate geopolitical risks and the increasingly complex legal frameworks pertaining to market access and regulatory barriers, trade remedies (anti-dumping, anti-subsidy and safeguards), foreign-direct investment screening, and trade compliance, notably in the fields of customs, EU sanctions law and export controls.
He has many years of experience as litigation counsel in complex proceedings before the WTO (assisting clients at all stages of WTO dispute settlement, in over 20 distinct disputes, across a wide range of WTO agreements), the General Court and the Court of Justice of the European Union and various national courts. He also possesses rich experience representing clients in high-profile trade-remedy investigations before the European Commission, across a variety of industry sectors.
Claus holds an LL.M. from Yale Law School and doctorates in both public international law (University of Oxford) and economics (University Paris 1 "Panthéon-Sorbonne") and thus brings a sought-after dual perspective to his work. He is a regular speaker at international conferences and his research has been published in leading journals such as the American Journal of International Law and the European Journal of International Law. In 2023, he authored the first comprehensive, provision-by-provision, commentary in German language on the EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism.