CV

Nicolas Diebold is a professor of public economic and competition law, international economic law, and general administrative law, and he regularly serves as an expert consultant. His research focuses on protecting competition from excessive regulations, subsidies, cartels, and trade barriers. Nicolas Diebold teaches in the areas of competition law, procurement law, WTO law, investment protection agreements and investor-state arbitration, as well as bilateral relations between Switzerland and the EU. As a member of the Competition Commission (ComCo), he is part of the decision-making body for antitrust investigations. He has been a member of the faculty management since 2019 and served as dean from 2022 to 2024. He is a founding member of the Institute for Economy and Regulation (WiRe), which he led as managing director until 2022, and he is also a member of the editorial board of the Swiss Journal of Competition Law (SZKW). Nicolas is a member of the Swiss Arbitration Academy (SAA) and is available for mandates in arbitration and dispute resolution proceedings.

Nicolas Diebold was born in South Africa in 1978 and grew up in Baden, Switzerland. He studied law at the Universities of Geneva and Zurich (lic. iur. Geneva 2003) and received an LL.M. degree from Duke University in 2004 as a participant in the Geneva-Duke partnership programme. After qualifying as a lawyer in the canton of Aargau and in New York, he gained experience in international economic law as a stagiaire at the European Commission (DG Trade) in Brussels and at UNCITRAL in Vienna. Whilst completing his doctorate (PhD) he worked as a research and teaching assistant at the Institute of European and International Economic Law at the University of Bern, and spent a sabbatical year as a visiting scholar at Stanford University on an SNSF grant. In 2009, Nicolas gained his doctorate from the University of Bern with a thesis entitled ‘Non-Discrimination in International Trade in Services’, published by Cambridge University Press. His work was awarded the Paul Guggenheim Prize and the Professor Walther Hug Prize. He completed the ‘Habilitation’ postdoctoral qualification at the University of Lucerne in 2016 with a monograph entitled ‘Freizügigkeit im Mehrebenensystem’ (Free Movement and Multi-Level Governance). Whilst completing this qualification, Nicolas Diebold spent a sabbatical year as a visiting scholar at the University of Edinburgh. Further research stays have taken him to the Université de Lausanne (2021) and to the New Zealand Centre of International Economic Law (NZCIEL) at Victoria University of Wellington (2024/25).

Publications

Legal Expertise

Prof. Dr. Nicolas Diebold is a recognised expert in competition law, international economic law, public procurement, and the regulation of industries such as public transportation, energy, and telecommunications, as well as general administrative law. His research focuses on safeguarding competition against excessive regulation, subsidies, cartels, and trade barriers. He teaches courses in competition law, public procurement law, WTO law, investment protection, investor–state arbitration, and the bilateral relations between Switzerland and the European Union. 

He frequently acts as an expert consultant for government authorities and private entities and is available for mandates in arbitration and dispute resolution proceedings related to trade, investment, and competition matters. His recent expert opinions have addressed legal questions concerning the framework for renewable energy projects on public forest land, the operation of sports and infrastructure facilities on public property, and the participation of public-law institutions in private undertakings. Further opinions have dealt with the management of public assets, the regulation of legal services outside the traditional lawyer’s monopoly, and the investment activities of cantonal and municipal authorities. In addition, he has advised on the implementation of procurement sanction mechanisms under the Federal and Intercantonal Public Procurement Acts, as well as on the regulatory treatment of emerging business models such as ride-sharing and short-term rentals.

Achievements

Vested interests