Bjørnar Alterskjær

Bjørnar Alterskjær has extensive experience from working with EU and EEA law, and has for over 20 years worked extensively with public procurement, state aid and competition law, in addition to cases related to the rules of the internal market in the EU/EEA.

He has extensive experience from Brussels, and is considered one of the leading lawyers in state aid law. Very few lawyers have more experience in handling state aid cases. Alterskjær's experience from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries, ESA and as a lawyer, gives him unique knowledge and expertise in the area.

Alterskjær is member of the Centre for Continuing Legal Education’s professional committee for competition and state aid law, with main responsibility for the state aid area. He organizes the Centre for Continuing Legal Education’s annual course in state aid, where he is both course leader and lecturer. He is one of the authors of the book Statsstøtte - EØS-avtalens regler om offentlig støtte (State Aid - The EEA Agreement's rules on state aid).

Alterskjær has worked in the legal department of the EFTA Surveillance Authority (ESA) for over six years. For several years, Alterskjær was primarily responsible for state aid law, procurement law and competition law in ESA's legal department. Through his many years of work in ESA, Alterskjær has gained extensive and comprehensive experience with reviewing incoming state aid notifications and block exemption notifications, an experience that is difficult to gain elsewhere than in ESA. This work has given him unique competence in what is required for various national schemes to be approved by the monitoring body as compatible with the support regulations.

Alterskjær has extensive procedural experience before the EFTA and European Court of Justice. He has represented ESA, and later private parties in 30 cases before these courts in most areas of EEA law, which means that he is among the lawyers in private practice with the most experience in this area in Norway. A number of the cases Bjørnar handled before the courts dealt with state aid law issues.

Alterskjær also worked for several years with public procurement and state aid in the Ministry of Trade and Industry and in the Competition Policy Department in the Ministry of Government Administration and Reform.