Brussels, 13/09/2010 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission announced on Monday 13 September that it had appointed Prof. Dr. Wouter P.J. Wils as Hearing Officer for competition cases. As of 16 September 2010, he will join Michael Albers, who was appointed Hearing Officer in 2008. Both Hearing Officers are invested by the Commission with independent decision-making powers, are not members of the Directorate General for Competition and report directly to the Commissioner for Competition, Joaquín Almunia.
“Given his outstanding experience in competition enforcement both inside and outside the Commission, independent thinking as an academic and well known expertise in procedural law matters, Mr. Wils, together with his colleague Michael Albers, will make a significant contribution to maintaining the highest standards of procedural fairness in our cases,” said Commissioner Almunia. Wils is currently a member of the Commission's Legal Service and a Visiting Professor at King's College London. He was educated both as an economist and as a lawyer in Louvain, Utrecht and Harvard, and is a former referendaire of Advocate General Van Gerven at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. The Commission launched the recruitment procedure, open to senior Commission officials from all its departments, in May 2010. (L.C./transl.rt)