Profile: Lourdes Catrain

Trade and Customs

Biography: Trade & Customs

Lourdes Catrain is Hogan & Hartson's Europe trade group director, responsible for both the Brussels and Geneva offices. She focuses her practice on EU trade defence investigations and matters involving customs classification, customs valuation, EU rules of origin and country of origin marking and labelling. Lourdes also advises on the WTO compatibility of EU legislation and measures in connection with market access issues and trade remedies.

Lourdes's recent work includes representing Philips in the highly complex expiry review investigation of anti-dumping duties on energy-saving lamps from China, and obtaining an unprecedented limited one-year extension of duties (as opposed to the normal five-year duration). She is also advising one of the world's largest meat processing operators on regulatory issues including the import licences and compliance with EU food hygiene and veterinary laws.

She completed her law degree at Universidad Complutense in Madrid in 1989. She received an LLM degree from the University of Michigan Law School in 1992, specialising in antitrust and international trade law. Before joining Hogan & Hartson, Lourdes worked for the European Commission, as well as US and European law firms. She also occupied an in-house counsel position with the high-street fashion retailer Inditex-Zara.

Lourdes is a regular speaker at conferences on international trade and customs issues. She is a member of the Madrid Bar and, in addition to her native Spanish, she speaks English, Italian and French. Lourdes has published numerous articles on international trade and is on the editorial board of the Global Trade and Customs Journal (Kluwer).