Expert resume of Professor emeritus Dr. René Smits

Professor emeritus of the Law of EMU, University of Amsterdam; Consultant on banking regulation sustainable finance and financial sanctions; P.R.I.M.E. Finance Expert.

Professor emeritus Dr. René Smits is a consultant on the law of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), EU banking regulation, sustainable finance and financial sanctions. He was a part-time professor of the law of the EMU at the University of Amsterdam where he has taught EMU law (2001-2017) and Institutional Aspects of EU Financial and Monetary Law and Regulation (2018-2024) ll in the Master Law & Finance. He was a Member of the Administrative Board of Review (ABoR), the independent review panel for the ECB’s supervisory decisions (2014-2024).

Professor emeritus Smits has been the General Counsel of the Netherlands Central Bank (DNB), where he worked for 24 years. In 2001, he became Head of the Legal Department of the Netherlands Competition Authority (NMa). He has been Chief Legal Counsel to the Board of NMa (2004-2013) and Compliance Officer (2009-2013). Until March 2014, he was Strategic Legal Counsel, Compliance Officer and Complaints Officer at the Authority for Consumers & Markets (ACM), successor to NMa. From 2009 - 2021, he has been an assessor in the Belgium Competition Authority's Competition College.

René Smits has been the driving force behind an online overview of case law on banking supervision by the European Central Bank and resolution by the Single Resolution Board: The Banking Union and Union Courts, published at the website of the European Banking Institute. This regularly updated publication, co-authored with Federico Della Negra and, currently, Thomaz Braga de Arruda, seeks to provide transparency about the judicial challenges against the ECB and the SRB.

From his recent academic publications: (together with John Taylor) Bank Holding Company Regulation in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa: A Comparative Inventory and a Call for Pan-African Regulation, Journal of Banking Regulation, Volume 18, 2017, 1-36; and at SSRN; The invisible core of values in the European integration project, From the Board (editorial), Legal Issues of Economic Integration 45, no. 3 (2018): 221-228, available here; Towards a single standard of professional secrecy for supervisory authorities – A reform proposal, co-authored with Nikolai Badenhoop, published in: (2019) 44 E.L. Rev. 295-318, also atSSRN;; SSM and the SRB accountability at European level: room for improvements? Banking Union Scrutiny paper for the European Parliament’s Economic Governance Support Unit (EGOV), April 2020, available here; The ECB's mandate in the face of climate change and biodiversity loss, 2022, at SSRN, chapter 8 in: René Smits (ed.), Sustainable Finance and Climate Change - Law and Regulation, Edward Elgar Publishing 2024,; Financial sanctions: the development of an EU practice, at SSRN, chapter 3 in International Sanctions: Monetary and Financial Law Perspectives, a book by members of the Committee on International Monetary Law of the International Law Association (MOCOMILA), edited by Chiara Zilioli, General Counsel, European Central Bank; Professor of Law, Goethe University Frankfurt, Régis Bismuth, Professor of Law, Science Po Law School and Luc Thévenoz, Professor of Law, University of Geneva. ; Reflections at this juncture, paper for the International Colloquium in memoriam of Luís Silva Morais Capital Markets and Banking Unions, Law and the Courts (Challenges and Perspectives), delivered at the Università di Bologna, 13 February 2025.