Speakers

Session 1 – Filling the gaps: delivering a deeper, more competitive and better connected Union

Steven Truxal – Professor and Director, International Institute of Air and Space Law (IIASL) at Leiden University

Steven Truxal is Full Professor of Air and Space Law and Director of the International Institute of Air and Space Law at Leiden University. He is also Programme Director for Leiden’s award-winning Advanced Master of Laws (LL.M.) programme in Air and Space Law. Steven’s research focuses on economic and environmental regulation of air transport with a focus on competition law and sustainability. He is Scientific Advisor at the Florence School of Regulation, European University Institute and serves on the advisory boards of the Zeitschrift für Luft- und Weltraumrecht (German Journal of Air and Space Law) and the Indian Review of Air and Space Law. He is the author of ‘Competition and Regulation in the Airline Industry: Puppets in Chaos’ and ‘Economic and Environmental Regulation of International Aviation: From Inter-National to Global Governance’. Steven worked previously for the University of London, Humboldt University of Berlin and Deutsche Lufthansa AG.

Thanos Pallis – Professor of Port & Maritime Economics and Policy, University of Piraeus

Thanos Pallis is Professor of Ports and Shipping Economics and Policy at the Department of Maritime Studies, University of Piraeus, Greece. Co-director of the web-knowledge platform PortEconomics, and Vice-Chair of the global Port Performance Research Network (PPRN), in 2023 he was listed in the top 2% of most cited researchers in the realm of transportation and logistics around the globe. A regular advisor of international institutions on projects shaping maritime shipping and ports in North America, South America, Asia, and Europe, he led UN research on the impact of the pandemic on maritime supply chains. He served as President of the International Association of Maritime Economists (IAME), Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University, US, Secretary-General of MedCruise, and General Secretary for Ports & Port Policy, Ministry of Shipping, Greece. He co-authored the book Port Economics, Management and Policy. He is currently a member of the IAPH Risk & Resilience Committee and co-authors the IAPH World Ports Tracker.

Enrico Giovanninni – Professor, University of Rome Tor Vergata and LUISS Guido Carli University, former Minister of Sustainable Infrastructure and Mobility of Italy

Enrico Giovannini is full professor of Economic statistics and Sustainable development at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata” and professor at the National School of Administration (SNA). He was Minister of Sustainable Infrastructures and Mobility in the Draghi government (February 2021 – October 2022) and Minister of Labour and Social Policies in the Letta government (April 2013 – February 2014). He is co-founder and Scientific Director of the Italian Alliance for Sustainable Development (ASviS), a coalition of more than 300 organisations established to implement in Italy the UN 2030 Agenda. He was Director of Statistics and Chief Statistician of the OECD (2001-2009) and President of the Italian Statistical Institute (2009-2013). In October 2014, the President of the Italian Republic made him “Cavaliere di Gran Croce al Merito della Repubblica”, the highest ranking honour of the Italian Republic and in January 2023 he received an honorary PhD in “Sustainable development and climate change”. He is the author of more than 130 articles published in national and international journals and six books on statistical and economic topics.

Susanna Metsälampi - Leading legal advisor Finnish Transport and Communications Agency TRAFICOM 

Susanna Metslampi, LLM from Helsinki University, has been working in the Finnish transport administration since 1992 in various positions, engaging in rulemaking and international cooperation at national, European and global level.

Having started with aviation matters, she was designated head of department for Transport Law in the former Transport Safety Authority in 2012, and she has since covered matters related to all modes of transport. In 2015 she was designated project manager for developing a new Finnish law, the Transport Services Act, which covers all modes of transport and transport services in the whole transport system.

Currently, she works as a leading legal adviser for Transport System Services in the Finnish Transport and Communication Agency, specializing on issues and topics covering the whole Transport System.

Session 2 - An inclusive twin transition in the field of transport: mission possible

Alan McKinnon – Professor of Logistics, Kühne Logistics University

Alan McKinnon is Professor of Logistics at the Kuehne Logistics University, Hamburg, Germany and Emeritus Professor at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh.  Over an academic career spanning 44 years he has conducted research on many different aspects of logistics and supply chain management, publishing extensively in journals, books and reports.  He has advised several governments, parliamentary committees and international organizations, including the World Bank, International Transport Forum and European Commission. He was chair of the World Economic Forum’s Logistics and Supply Chain Council, a member of the EU’s High Level Group on Logistics and chair of the Transport Advisory Group of the EU’s Horizon 2020 research programme. Much of his research has focused on the environmental sustainability of logistical activities. He was a lead author of the transport chapter in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 5^th Assessment report (2014) and in 2018 published a book on Decarbonizing Logistics. 

Alberto Pototschnig – Part-time Professor, Florence School of Regulation - FSR Energy

Alberto Pototschnig is part-time Professor and Deputy Director for the World of Practice at the Florence School of Regulation – European University Institute, where he has been teaching on energy regulation and market design since 2004. Since October 2020, Alberto is also a Director of DFC-Economics, a consultancy outfit providing independent economic analysis and advice on complex business and regulatory issues.

From 2010 to 2019 he was the first Director of the EU Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER). Before joining the Agency, from 2006 to 2010, Alberto was a Partner in Mercados EMI, a Madrid-based international consultancy specialising in the energy sector, where he served as CEO and Deputy Chairman. He previously worked at the Italian Transmission System Operators (from 2003 to 2005), served as the first CEO of the Italian Electricity Market Operator (from 2000 to 2003) and in the Italian Energy Regulatory Authority (AEEG, from 1997 to 2000), with his final position being Director of Electricity Regulation. Alberto started his professional career in 1989 with London Economics, an international economic consultancy, where he was eventually in charge of the industrial economic advisory practice. Between 2003 and 2005 Alberto also acted as an adviser to the Italian Government on environmental and climate policy issues.

Alberto holds a Degree in Economics from Bocconi University in Milan and an MSc in Econometrics and Mathematical Economics from the London School of Economics, University of London.

Nina Nesterova – Professor Sustainable Development in Tourism and Transport, Breda University of Applied Sciences

Dr. Nina Nesterova is Professor of Tourism and Transport at the Breda University of Applied Sciences.

In her work she applies the knowledge on sustainable transport developments to the tourism sector, contributing to emission reduction from the tourism and transport industry in Europe. Nina is also leading the CIVITAS Educational Network in Urban Mobility and co-chairing the CIVITAS New Mobility Partnership community.

George Yannis – Professor in Traffic Safety and Management, Department of Transportation Planning and Engineering of the School of Civil Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA)

George Yannis is Professor in Traffic and Safety Engineering with particular focus on data science and Director of the Department of Transportation Planning and Engineering of the School of Civil Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA).  For more than 30 years, he has contributed extensively in more than 315 research and engineering projects and studies and in several scientific committees of the European Commission and other International Organisations (UNECE, OECD, WHO, World Bank, EIB, CEDR, ERF, IRF, PIARC, UITP, ETSC, ECTRI, WCTR, TRB). He has published more than 870 scientific papers (246 in scientific journals) which are widely cited worldwide.

Session 3 - Towards a wider Europe: revisiting our transport agenda in a changed geopolitical context

Luc Ampleman – Assistant Professor, Institute of Geography and Spatial Management, Jagiellonian University

Luc Ampleman is an Assistant Research Professor at the Institute of Geography and Spatial Management of the Jagiellonian University in Poland. He is a former governmental advisor for the Ministry of Transport of Québec and a transport planner in Canada’s northernmost region of the Province of Québec. His research interests cover transport diplomacy, local geopolitics and sustainable mobility in remote areas and the Arctic region(s). Over the last 20 years, his professional and teaching engagements have been motivated by three central questions: how to bring together social actors with divergent interests around transport initiatives (from local areas to the global arena - and back); how to foster sustainable mobility in rural and peripheral regions; and how better to support young people in learning about political issues. He is the author of Transport Geopolitics: Decoding and Understanding Transport as a Source of Conflicts (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).

Olaf Merk – Administrator, International Transport Forum, OECD

Olaf Merk leads the work on transport resilience at the International Transport Forum (ITF) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). As such, he directs policy-relevant studies and supports governments. He has written extensively on transport resilience, maritime transport, port-cities, decarbonisation and geopolitics.

Olaf Merk is member of the Editorial Board of the academic journal Maritime Economics and Logistics. He was Associate Professor at Sciences Po Paris between 2014-17. At the OECD he also worked at the Public Governance Directorate on urban development, fiscal decentralisation and public finance. Prior to the OECD, he held various positions at the Netherlands Ministry of Finance. He holds a Master’s degree in Political Science from the University of Amsterdam.

Dominik P. Jankowski – Deputy Permanent Representative, Permanent Delegation of the Republic of Poland to NATO

Dominik P. Jankowski is a Polish security policy expert, diplomat, and think tanker. He currently serves as Deputy Permanent Representative at the Permanent Delegation of Poland to NATO. In 2023, he worked as Policy Adviser in the Office of the NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. From 2018 to 2022 he was Political Adviser and Head of the Political Section at the Permanent Delegation of Poland to NATO. Prior to this, he has held numerous international security related roles within public administration (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, National Security Bureau) and the military (General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces), including those related to the EU, NATO, OSCE, and arms control policy. In 2019, he was James S. Denton Transatlantic Fellow with the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). In 2021-2022 he was Arms Control Negotiation Academy (ACONA) Fellow with Harvard University. He is a prolific writer with over 250 publications which have appeared in 20 countries. His recent publications include: “European Warfighting Resilience and NATO Race of Logistics: Ensuring That Europe Has the Fuel It Needs to Fight the Next War” (Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C., 2023) and “Central and Eastern Europe: NATO’s New Centre of Gravity” (Institute of Central Europe, Lublin-Brussels, 2023).

Stefania Benaglia – Head of the Foreign Policy Unit CEPS

Stefania is the Head of the Foreign Policy Unit.

Previously she led the Global Connectivity Programme. Her research focuses on Global Gateway and EU-Asia relations where she also consults in Senior/Team Leader roles. Stefania is a frequent commentator for leading media and regularly briefs senior policymakers – including the European Parliament and various European Prime Minister’s offices. 

Stefania is also an experienced Public Diplomacy expert and has worked extensively in Track 2 and Track 1,5 formats, mostly – though not exclusively – between the EU and third countries. Between 2014 and 2017, she lived in India, working on EU-India defence cooperation for Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES).  Previously Stefania worked in the European Commission – Political & Security Committee team and then represented the EC at the Politico-Military Group and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. Stefania worked and studied also in Israel (at the International Institute of Counter-Terrorism), the United States (at the Italian Embassy, at SAIS and at San Francisco State University), France (at Science Po Grenoble) and Spain (Leonardo da Vinci programme).

Stefania holds an MA in Strategic Studies from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University, an MA in International Development from the University of Pavia and a BA in International Relations from the University of Bologna.

Juan Montero-Pascual, Director of the Florence School of Regulation, Transport Chapter, of the European University Institute

Juan Montero (PhD Law, EUI) is a Professor of Administrative Law and Economic Regulation in the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) in Madrid. He has been working with FSR Transport since 2016 and was appointed part-time professor in February 2018.

His research is focused on the regulation of network industries, both traditional like railways, telecommunications and posts, and new network industries like digital platforms, and the interaction between them, particularly in transportation.He has published six books and more than fifty scientific articles on independent regulatory agencies, network access regulation, public service obligations, platform regulation and the sharing economy. He is Associate-Editor in Chief of the Journal Competition and Regulation in Network Industries, and member of the board of 360 Revista de Alta Velocidad and other journals.He provides regular advice to carriers and governments on institution building, liberalization and public service schemes.