Aleksei Petrenko

Areas of professional expertise:

  • public international law;
  • general international law;
  • peaceful settlement of international disputes;
  • WTO, free trade agreements;
  • Eurasian Economic Union and regional integration;
  • International investment law.

Education

In 2008, Aleksei graduated from the IKBFU (Kaliningrad). In 2013, he obtained an LL.M. degree with a specialization in international law from the University of Göttingen (Germany). He also completed an exchange semester at the University of Kiel (Germany).

In 2024, the degree of Doctor of Law (Dr. jur.) was awarded following the defence of the dissertation at the University of Göttingen. The dissertation was written in the field of international law (“The Right to Regulate in International Economic Law: Towards a General Theory with Lessons from the GATS”

In 2016, Aleksei received the “International Law in the 21st Century” Award from the ICLRC. The previous year, the Society of International Economic Law highly commended his paper on WTO law in an essay competition on international economic law.

Professional Experience

From 2016 to 2017, Aleksei worked as a research assistant at the Institute of International and European Law at the University of Göttingen.

Later, Aleksei joined the WTO Expertise Center in Moscow, where he handled inter-State trade disputes from 2017 to 2019. He was a member of the litigation team that achieved the first win in a WTO dispute initiated by Russia. Aleksei participated in over ten inter-State disputes, including panel and Appellate Body proceedings, representing complainants, respondents and third parties. He also took part in WTO committee meetings and conducted practical seminars on trade law for representatives of government agencies and large businesses.

Aleksei has developed and taught law courses at three universities in both Russian and English. In 2022, he joined the School of International Law at the Faculty of Law of the Higher School of Economics (Moscow) as an Associate Professor, where he teaches subjects related to public international law.

Before joining the ICLRC, Aleksei worked with the Center as an expert, and in 2020, he officially became part of the team, focusing on issues linked to public international law.