Cees Dekker

Consultant at Simmons & Simmons

Speaker

Cees Dekker is an advocaat, admitted to the Amsterdam and Brussels bars (EU-list), with over 35 years of experience, advising on all aspects of EU and Dutch Competition law in a wide range of sectors, with a special focus on state aid and foreign subsidies. Cees acts as a consultant to Simmons & Simmons as from 2022 after having been a partner in another law firm for many years.

His state aid work covers all kinds of complex financial relations involving companies and government bodies concerning, for instance, energy transition projects (windparks, heat networks, geothermal heat), infrastructure (airports, ports, rail, sports arenas, digital infrastructures), health care, R&D projects, risk capital and rescue and restructuring aid. Cees has extensive experience in European Commission procedures (notifications, complaints) and national court litigation concerning recovery of state aid.

Apart from his state aid work, Cees has assisted and advised companies and industry associations in more than 30 cartel investigations, including dawn raids, by the Dutch ACM and the European Commission, and litigated before the EU Courts and Dutch courts.

Holding LLMs in law from the University of Groningen and the University of London (Economic Regulation), he currently chairs the State Aid Expert Group of the Confederation of Netherlands Industry and is one of its representatives to BusinessEurope. He regularly lectures on state aid at universities, including the University of Amsterdam and the University of Bergen.

Cees is frequently published in academic journals and has written books on competition law procedures and state aid. He succeeded former General Court judge René Barents as the author of the Directory of EU Case Law on State Aids, and serves as the editor of Kluwer’s State Aid Navigator. He is also co-author (together with Vincent Verouden) of the chapter on Services of General Economic Interest in Werner/Verouden, EU state Aid Control, Law and Economics (2nd ed., 2025).