Governance
The Executive Committee manages the day-to-day affairs of the Association and prepares the meeting of the General Assembly. It is composed of the President, the Vice-President, the Secretary-General, the Treasurer and elected members. The General Assembly is SELA’s supreme authority. It is composed of all the members. The General Assembly holds annual ordinary meetings.
The General Assembly is SELA’s supreme authority. It is composed of all the members. The General Assembly holds annual ordinary meetings.
Thomas Cottier
President
Professor emeritus of European and International Economic Law at the University of Bern; former managing director of the World Trade Institute. He has extensive experience as a trade negotiator for Switzerland and as chair and member of numerous GATT and WTO dispute settlement panels His interest in energy law mainly relates to the challenges climate change mitigation and energy security from a perspective of multilevel governance entailing international, European and Swiss law.
Ilaria Espa
Secretary General
Ilaria Espa is Senior Assistant Professor of International Economic Law at Università della Svizzera italiana (USI), Senior Research Fellow at the World Trade Institute and Adjunct Professor at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan. She is furthermore Lead Counsel of the ‘Natural Resources’ Programme of the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law (CISDL).
She has extensive expertise on issues at the intersection of trade and sustainability, mainly in the areas of climate change, energy and commodities, as well as on the law governing the sustainable management of natural resources. Her interest in energy law lies in the challenges to and the opportunities entailed by the energy transition with a focus on the potential of carbon market mechanisms and new technologies/applications such as carbon capture and storage to accelerate change in Switzerland and beyond.
Katarina Mirkovic
Treasurer
Katarina Mirkovic is Treasurer of the Swiss Energy Law Association (SELA) and a PhD Candidate at the University of Geneva. She also serves as Teaching Assistant at Università della Svizzera italiana (USI).
Her professional background combines experience in leading Swiss law firms and in supranational and international settings. She previously worked at Kellerhals & Carrard in Lugano, where she gained hands-on exposure to complex cross-border matters, including international arbitration and transactional work. In parallel, she has contributed in roles within supranational organisations, engaging with legal and policy issues in an international, multi-stakeholder environment.
Federico Piccaluga
Executive Committee member
Federico Piccaluga is General Counsel of Duferco Group and a qualified lawyer with international in-house experience in energy law. He is also in charge of Duferco Group Sustainability activities. In 2019, he has been appointed Non-Executive Board Member of Wesii, an Italian start-up operating worldwide, that provides cutting-edge multispectral inspection services in the energy sector.
He is Adjunct Professor of Energy Law and Environmental Sustainability at Politecnico di Milano . Federico is a member of the Swiss Bar Association and also actively participates in different organizations including the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC), in which he holds the role of Country Representative for Switzerland.
f.piccaluga@bluewin.ch
Kateryna Holzer
Executive Committee member
Kateryna Holzer is Senior Researcher at the Centre for Climate, Energy and Environmental Law at the University of Eastern Finland, where she also teaches a course on International Economic Law and Green Transitions. Formerly she was visiting scholar at the WTO Trade and Environment Division and worked as a postdoc at the World Trade Institute in Bern and as an assistant professor at the Academy of Foreign Trade in Kyiv. Her research interests in energy law revolve around the role of trade instruments in fostering the transition to a zero-carbon future, including energy taxes, product sustainability standards and border carbon adjustments.
katia.holzer@gmail.com
Brigitta Kratz
Executive Committee member
She is an experienced practitioner specialising in energy law, including dispute resolution. Since 2020, she has been a board member at Regionalwerke Baden AG and, from 2007 to 2018, she served as Vice President of the Swiss Federal Electricity Market Regulatory Authority ElCom. She regularly lectures and publishes on energy law, including in the Yearbook of Swiss-EU Business Law of the Europa Institute at the University of Zurich.
She is co-editor and co-author of the three-volume Swiss Commentary on Energy Law (Weblaw, 2016-2020) and serves on the Advisory Board of SWEET-refuel.ch, a research consortium mandated by the Swiss government to develop pathways for sustainable fuels and platform chemicals in the Swiss energy system.
Reto Muller
Executive Committee member
Reto Müller is a senior lecturer (Hochschuldozent) at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), where he is responsible for the area of expertise in energy and sustainability law in the Institute for Regulation and Competition (IRW). He also teaches at ETH Zurich and the Faculty of Law at the University of Basel.
Markus Schreiber
Executive Committee member
Markus Schreiber is a legal scholar trained in Hamburg and the U.S. (Bucerius Law School; McGeorge School of Law). After completing the Second State Examination in 2013, he trained and worked in energy-related institutions and briefly practiced energy law in Hamburg.
Since 2014 he has worked at the University of Lucerne under Prof. Sebastian Heselhaus, earning awards for a thesis on law and technological innovation. He later focused on public law (energy and climate) and, from 1 March 2025, serves as Assistant Professor (tenure track) of Public Law and Blockchain at the Zug Institute for Blockchain Research (ZIBR), University of Lucerne.