Nina Niejahr

Practice Areas

EU State aid

EU Litigation

EU Competition Law

Career

Nina Niejahr is a senior counsel in the Firm's Brussels-based EU Competition & Regulatory Affairs Practice. She has over 20 years of experience in advising clients on all aspects of EU law, focussing on State aid and competition law. Nina is ranked by Chambers for her State aid practice and listed by Who's Who Legal and the German JUVE directory as recommended/"oft empfohlen". Nina also regularly litigates in the EU Courts in Luxembourg. She has published and speaks at seminars and conferences on a variety of topics of EU State aid law and litigation.

Nina advises clients on a wide variety of competition law issues, but primarily on EU State aid law and regulation. Her State aid practice covers ensuring compliance of public support with EU State aid law and procedure, including representing private and public clients in complaints and (pre-)notification to obtaining State aid approval by the EU Commission as well as defending against unwarranted allegations of State aid, including before the EU Courts. Nina also helps clients structure and implement their European distribution system, assists clients with implementing competition compliance programmes and defends clients in cartel investigations. She regularly represents clients in procedures before the EU Commission and the EU Courts.

Publications

Nina has published extensively and speaks regularly at seminars and conferences on a variety of EU State aid law topics. She is also a frequent lecturer at the Academy of European Law (ERA). In 2021 she presented for the 4rd consecutive year at the Academy of European Law event "EU State Aid Litigation".

She has again authored the chapter on EU legal protection in State aid cases (EU-Rechtsschutz in Beihilfefällen) in the 2022 German language commentary „Münchener Kommentar zum Wettbewerbsrecht (Kartellrecht)", Band 5 (Beihilfenrecht), Verlag C.H. Beck, and is the author of the earlier EU litigation chapter in "European State Aid Law: A Commentary", 2016, Sacker/ Montag (editors), C.H. Beck, Hart, Nomos. Nina also co-authored one of the first German language commentaries on Regulation 1/2003, which at the time modernized the EU's anti-trust procedure ("EG-KartellVO", Verlag Recht und Wirtschaft, 2004).

Recent publications include co-authoring with Bram Hoorelbeke the Chapter on "Origins of the notion of State aid: Competition between Businesses or between Countries?" ("El Origen de las Ayudas de Estado: ¿Competencia entre Empresas o entre Estados?"), in the 2022 publication of the Spanish Fundación Impuestos y Competitividad entitled "State aid in taxation - Spanish experience and current context " ("Las Ayudas de Estado en el Ámbito Tributario. Experiencia Española y Contexto Actual".