Cani Fernández

Cani Fernández Vicién is a Spanish competition lawyer and former president of Spain’s National Commission for Markets and Competition (CNMC), which she led from 2020 to 2026. She also served on the Bureau of the OECD Competition Committee beginning in 2021.

Before joining the CNMC, Fernández spent more than three decades in private practice specializing in European Union and competition law. She was a partner at Cuatrecasas from 1997 to 2020 and previously served from 1994 to 1997 as a legal adviser to a judge at the Court of Justice of the European Union. In early 2020, she briefly served as an adviser in the Office of the President of the Government of Spain.

Fernández has held numerous leadership positions in the international competition-law community. She was the first woman appointed co-chair of the International Bar Association’s Antitrust Committee and has also served in leadership roles in the American Bar Association’s Antitrust Law Section. She previously acted as a nongovernmental adviser to the European Commission and the CNMC in connection with the International Competition Network.

She has taught European Union and competition law at institutions including Carlos III University of Madrid, the Toulouse School of Economics, the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics, the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and the University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law.

Fernández has received numerous professional honors, including recognition by Chambers as a “Star Individual” in Spanish competition law and its award for Outstanding Contribution to the Legal Profession. She has also been named among Global Competition Review’s “100 Women in Antitrust Worldwide.”

Fernández earned her law degree, with honors, from the University of Zaragoza and a postgraduate degree in European law, with great distinction, from the Free University of Brussels. She received a NATO fellowship in 1986.