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Annabelle Lepièce is specialized in European law, with a focus on competition law (antitrust, merger control and State aid), Foreign Subsidies Regulation (EU FSR) and foreign direct investment (FDI). She also has a broad experience in the EU freedoms (services, goods, establishment).
In competition law, she advises companies on vertical agreements or cooperation with competitors or on potential risk of abuse of dominance (tariffs, rebates, access to essential infrastructure, etc.). She notifies mergers to the European Commission or the Belgian Competition Authority. Annabelle lodges complaints with the competition authorities or represents companies under investigation. She assists them during dawn raids. She also provides tailored-made training on competition law. She proceeds to FDI notifications and advises companies on their strategy.
In State aid, her legal practice includes drafting and submitting notifications of public interventions, individual aid or aid schemes to the European Commission (energy, rescue and restructuring aid, RDI aid, infrastructure, agriculture, gaming, aid to the press, etc) and representing the public authorities in European investigations on illegal aid (aviation, collection of waste, fiscal exemptions, etc.). She advises public entities on the qualification of a measure as State aid, its potential compatibility with EU rules and the setting up of aid schemes, including measures co-financed with European structural funds.
She assists public entities and companies in European law, in the context of the transposition of directives or the compliance of their actions and projects with European law. She represents them in the context of investigations by the European Commission into State aid, the management of ERDF funds, infringement proceedings, etc.
She advises companies on European subsidies (applications, review of subsidy and consortium agreements, etc.) and represents them in case of litigation with the European Commission.
She has an extensive experience in EU litigation, representing both public authorities and private undertakings before the Court of Justice of the EU.
She has a recognized expertise in air transport and the airport sector (financing of airport activities and infrastructure, contracts with airlines, groundhandling, airport charges and modulations, funding for safety and security, concessions, etc.). Since 1998, she has represented the Belgian authorities in various European Commission investigations concerning the financing of Charleroi Airport and the contracts concluded with Ryanair. She has acted on behalf of regional authorities and French, Belgian, Dutch, Romanian, and Spanish airports in around fifteen Commission investigations into potential aid granted to airports and airlines, and she has prepared around ten aid notifications in the transport sector. She advises airport operators to ensure that their financing and the commercial agreements they conclude with airlines comply with European State aid rules, and more generally on their strategy in line with European law and competition law.
Annabelle is highly recommended lawyer in the last edition of the 100 Global Competition Review and has been recognized in the 2025 edition of Women in Antitrust.
Annabelle is also ranked in the Chambers Global 2026 in State aid (band 2), Chambers Europe 2026 editions in Competition (band 1) and State aid (band 2) and in the 2026 edition of the Legal 500 EMEA in Competition (tier 3 and leading individual) and in Aviation (tier 3 and leading individual).
Annabelle was also voted one of the world's leading practitioners in competition law - State aid in the Who's Who Legal: Competition 2025 report.
Since 2011, She has been teaching a course on State aid in the aviation sector as part of the MS Airport Management and MS Air Transport at l’Ecole Nationale d’Aviation Civile in Toulouse, and participates to conferences on this topic at the Assembly of European Regions, at Connect, at ACI, etc. She gave a lecture on State aid in the transport sector at the Université Paris I - Panthéon- Sorbonne [Panthéon-Sorbonne University] between 2010 and 2019.
Annabelle Lepièce presented the Wahlub project in December 2022 with Agoria in the context of a workshop for European digital innovation clusters. She participated in May 2023 to the training of national judges on the recovery of illegal aid by the invitation of the European Commission. She is regularly invited to hearings by the Committee of the Regions as an expert in State aid.
She is a member of the “Competition Women’s Network” and the Belgian Competition Law Association and has been invited to join the new European State Aid Law Association.
