Seminar on Infrastructure, Real Estate, Energy and Environmental Law
Guillaume Barazzone, partner at Jacquemoud Stanislas, is co-chair of a legal seminar with Professor Jean-Baptiste Zufferey, president of the Institute of Swiss and International Construction Law.
The seminar takes place five times per year and is focused on real estate, infrastructure and construction law as well as environmental and energy law. The participants benefit from speakers having in-depth expertise in these fields.
This seminar brings together elected officials, C-level managers and in-house lawyers of public authorities and para-public entities as well as private sector companies. Participants include the State of Geneva (canton de Genève), many municipalities (including the City of Geneva), Swiss Federal Railways (CFF), construction companies, real estate developers, architects, real estate commercial investment firm, pension funds and food retailers.
The regulations applicable to each infrastructure and real estate project often require in-depth knowledge of public and private law, such as contract law, public procurement and public-private partnerships as well as tax law. Infrastructure and important real estate projects often bring together several actors (public authorities and private actors) who must work together to implement and/or operate them. With respect to public law regulations, these actors have to comply with increasingly stricter legal constraints that make projects more complex, longer and more expensive. Moreover, climate change requires new kind of investments and projects as well as innovative legal solutions to reduce our carbon footprint.
For both public authorities and the private sector, building infrastructure and real estate has become very difficult, due to numerous regulations, proceedings and oppositions. In Switzerland, infrastructure and real estate projects are made even more complex by the overlap of sometimes three levels of state intervention (Swiss Confederation, cantons and municipalities), to which must be added numerous rapidly evolving private standards.
This seminar aims to help its participants to plan and structure such projects in the best possible way, identify in advance the legal issues that may arise before, during and after the construction. It also allows participants to have regular exchanges with specialists, as well as with their “peers” on legal issues and best practices.
