Franz Mayer
Chair of Public Law, University of Bielefeld,
Franz C. Mayer holds the Chair in Public Law, European Law, Public International Law, Comparative Law and Law and Politics at the University of Bielefeld (Law Faculty), Germany. He studied Law, Political Science and History at the Universities of Bonn and Munich, at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences-Po) and at Yale Law School.
Visiting researcher Harvard Law School 2000; annual Visiting lecturer University of Warsaw since 2000; Visiting professor at Paris 1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne) 2007 and at Paris 2 (Panthéon-Assas) 2010; General
Course Academy of European Law, European University Institute, Florence,
2011; Senior Emile Noël Fellow, NYU School of Law 2011; Visiting professor of Law at Columbia Law School Winter term 2012/2013.
His teaching and research interests focus on European constitutional and administrative law, on comparative law (in particular comparative constitutional law, with a focus on German, French and US law), on the
relationship between law and politics (in particular - but not only - in the EU context), on parliaments in times of globalization, on internet law, sports law (European soccer law) and more generally on international law and public law (in recent times with a focus on the
law of Free Trade Agreements and of Investor-State Dispute Settlement). More recently, he has worked on constitutional law aspects of Rent regulation Law in Berlin and Munich.
His practical activities mirror his research interests. Professor Mayer was Counsel to the German Parliament in the Treaty of Lisbon-trial in 2008-2009 and in the first Euro-crisis case 2010-2012 at the German Constitutional Court. He is currently Counsel to the German government in the CETA and in the EUSFTA cases at Germany's highest court (since 2016 and 2019, both cases still pending), in the case on the Unified
European Patent Court (since 2017) and in the case on the European Patent Office (since 2019, pending).
He has frequently testified as an expert witness in parliamentary hearings on constitutional law and EU law. He has been teaching EU law to future German diplomats at the German Foreign Service Academy
(Akademie Auswärtiger Dienst) since 2010. Since 2016, he has been a member of the German Football Association’s Federal Court (DFB Bundesgericht), ethics chamber.
He has dual French and German citizenship and lives in Berlin with his family.
Featured work
Completing Europe’s banking union: economic requirements and legal conditions
This contribution analyses the deficiencies of the current framework and identifies possible responses, in line with three levels of reform ambition.
How to get the European Banking Union unstuck
Enlarging and deepening: giving substance to the European Political Community
The EPC would not be, and should not be, regarded as a substitute for EU accession, but should be designed to work as an accelerator.
The Sound of Economics Live: An analysis of the German Constitutional Court ruling on the ECB QE programme
What does today's ruling of the German Constitutional Court mean for the ECB's Quantitative Easing programmme