Biography: Trade & Customs

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Dr Hans-Joachim Priess has been a partner at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer since 1994 and works in the Berlin office. He is a member of the antitrust, competition and trade practice group and environment, planning and regulatory practice group. He specialises in customs and trade law, including WTO dispute settlement proceedings and German, European and international public procurement law. Hans-Joachim has advised and represented governments, trade associations and multinational companies in trade negotiations, before national customs and export control authorities and in litigation, in particular before the German Tax Courts, the European courts, and in relation to WTO dispute settlement proceedings. He has handled several of the recently introduced external trade law clearance procedures for acquisitions of participations in German companies by foreign investors. Hans-Joachim is a member of the advisory committee of the German Customs Law Association (European forum for external trade, customs, and excise) and is a member of the board of the external trade law centre at the University of Münster.

Hans-Joachim was born in Bremerhaven, Germany, in 1958. He completed his legal education at the Universities of Kiel (Dr iur, 1988) and Freiburg, both in Germany, the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, and at the Indiana University school of law (LLM, 1984) and Harvard Law School. He worked in Brussels from 1990 to 2000. He speaks frequently and publishes widely on trade, customs and WTO law. He is the co-editor/author of WTO Handbuch (2003) and co-author of the leading German commentary on the Community Customs Code (Witte, Zollkodex, 5th edition, 2009).

Hans-Joachim joined the firm in 1991. He speaks German, English and French.