Florou, Aikaterini

Aikaterini Florou obtained her PhD in December 2017.

The topic of her dissertation, which she wrote under the supervision of Professor Diego Fernández Arroyo, is "Contractual Renegotiations and International Investment Arbitration: A Relational Contract Theory Interpretation of Investment Treaties”.

The members of the jury were Professors Chester Brown (Sydney), Diego Fernández Arroyo (Sciences Po), Sophie Lemaire (Dauphine), Makane M. Mbengue (Genève), Horatia Muir Watt (Sciences Po), and Attila Tanzi (Bologna).

She is currently a Legal and Policy Officer with the International Relations unit of the Directorate-General for Energy of the European Commission, and a barrister in Athens, Greece. Her work focuses on the interaction of EU law with international law in the field of energy, in particular as regards Intergovernmental Agreements of Member States with third countries. She is also in charge of the application of the Energy Charter Treaty in the EU and is involved in the modernization of the investment-protection provisions of the treaty. She advises also on other matters relating to international arbitration, inter alia, in the disputes between Naftogaz and Gazprom, and the relation between investment arbitration and EU law. Last, she works on the identification of legal, financial, and policy tools for enhancing liquidity and transparency in the global LNG market and the organization of expert workshops with government officials and stakeholders. She has also worked in the WTO team of the Legal Service of the European Commission, and the Legal Advisory Council to the Greek State.

Aikaterini's academic research and interests lie in particular in the field of international investment law with a specialization in energy disputes. She has adopted an economic approach to the analysis of international investment law and arbitration. During the second year of her doctoral studies, she was a visiting researcher at the university of Berkeley, where she developed the transaction-cost-economics part of her research. She has organized and taught a course in International Trade Law, and has also lectured on European Economic Law, and Energy Law. Moreover, she has served as a consultant with the OECD and the Columbia Centre on Sustainable Investment, where she contributed to large-scale empirical analyses of international investment treaties and arbitral awards.