CDR News covered Nils Wahl’s arrival at Covington. Johan Ysewyn, co-chair of Covington’s global antitrust practice, and Lisa Peets, co-chair of Covington’s technology and communications regulation practice, also provided insight on how Nils joining the firm.
Nils shared that while he had options which would have enabled him to stay at the CJEU, he sought a different challenge after nearly two decades in the EU judicial system. Praising the collegiate nature of his new firm, he says: “It could have been another law firm, but what attracted me to Covington is they have a different style of doing things and a different approach to law and litigation, […the team is] not just trying to ‘eat what you kill’, but to ‘[eat] together”.
Nils also told CDR News he is looking forward to applying his broad skills to a varied workload: “There are common [steps] regarding how to prepare any case long before you apply to a court, to figure out what you need to do beforehand to be successful later on – this is not limited to competition law, as in any interaction with EU or national institutions you need to prepare before [it].”
Looking forward, Nils sees increasing interaction between regulations and classical competition law, which he describes as “the use of competition law concepts in other contexts: should they be understood as competition law, or ‘something else’? If it is something else, will it have a bearing on classical competition law? It is not so simple to apply the concept of a ‘relevant market’ unless you are talking about competition law – the term is also used in public procurement, but not in the same way. So the interplay between the two will be very interesting.”
Johan pointed out the firm’s areas of strength dovetail well with Nils’ experience as a judge and advocate general: “Wahl is most known for competition cases […] but there is also a whole range of other areas that he’s touched upon like data protection, life sciences and technology regulatory.” A “broadening of instruments” is what Ysewyn sees as a major future trend in competition and regulatory law, proffering the once highly esoteric area of state aid as an example: “It is certainly a development that state aid has become a very important part of the suite of competition tools, especially in financial services where it has become a boardroom-level concern.” He sees the far-reaching effects of new provisions such as the EU Digital Markets Act and foreign direct investment (FDI) rules now coming to the forefront, and is confident that competition law work will grow in the coming years.
Lisa further noted that “longstanding legislation such as the GDPR, alongside new European rules, including the Digital Markets Act, Digital Services Act, Foreign Subsidies Regulation and new ESG laws, have led to an explosion in EU litigation. Nils’ extraordinary breadth of experience positions him well to help our clients strategize on the many important matters involving the European courts.”
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