University of Helsinki
On 8 March 2024, Iina Tornberg successfully defended the doctoral dissertation entitled “Balancing state interests with party autonomy in international commercial arbitration – Article 101 of the Treaty on Functioning of the European Union as a mandatory rule in Chinese International Economic and Trade Arbitration Center arbitration” on 8 March 2024.
Iina’s study of private international law (PIL) examines Article 101 of the Treaty on Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) as a mandatory rule in choice of law before the Chinese International Economic and Trade Arbitration Center (CIETAC) in Mainland China. It discovers how this EU competition law provision prohibiting restrictive agreements crucial for the operation of the European Union (the EU / the Union) functions as a choice of law rule – a rule defining when this particular EU competition law provision must be applied instead of the otherwise applicable provisions – in international commercial arbitration. It studies this mandatory provision in a foreign environment that is in CIETAC arbitration, where the provision’s nature as a fundamental provision essential for accomplishing the tasks entrusted to the Union, supposedly fails to be self-evident.
The public examination took place at the Faculty of Law, University of Helsinki.
Professor Lei Chen (Durham University) and Professor Sjef van Erp (University of Amsterdam) served as opponents, and Professor Ulla Liukkunen as the custos.
Her dissertation can be viewed at https://helda.helsinki.fi/items/9a3ba992-5adb-449a-ac3f-cc82eef5c9c9
