Dirk Auer
Director of Competition Policy
Dirk Auer is director of competition policy at the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE), where he manages ICLE’s work on competition and antitrust issues in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, and abroad.
Dirk joined ICLE as a senior fellow in October 2018 and was promoted to his current position in January 2022. In addition to his work with ICLE, Dirk also serves as an adjunct professor at the University of Liège, where he teaches European competition law and the economics of competition law, and at the Catholic University of Louvain, where he teaches American law.
Before joining ICLE, he worked as a research fellow at the Liège Competition and Innovation Institute (LCII) in Liège, Belgium. He also worked in the competition practices of two international law firms.
He earned his PhD in competition law and innovation from the University of Liège in 2019, writing his dissertation on the “innovation defense” in European and U.S. antitrust laws. His dissertation argued that competition enforcers should take steps to ensure that regulatory intervention does not chill firms’ incentives to innovate.
He also completed LLMs at the University of Chicago Law School in 2014 and at the University of Liège in 2011. He received his law degree from the Catholic University of Louvain in 2010, specializing in European law.
