Leiden University
Paul Glazener was born in September 1959. He came of age in a country that had been a founding member of the European Economic Community in 1957, two years before his birth. European economic law later became a central part of the legal work for which he is known.
Because his early life and family circumstances are not documented in the sources, the narrative of his formative years is limited to his later education and the legal profession he entered.
Glazener studied at Leiden University, which his professional record links to 1984. Founded in 1575 by William of Orange, Leiden is the oldest university in the Netherlands. The university was established in recognition of the city's resistance to Spanish siege, and it became a center for Dutch Reformed theology, science and medicine in its early centuries.
He was admitted to the bar in the Netherlands in 1985, the year after the period associated with his Leiden studies. Admission to the bar is the formal step that allowed a trained Dutch lawyer to practice before the courts.
Glazener was admitted to the bar in the Netherlands in 1985. From 1994 to 2012 he served as a deputy judge (rechter-plaatsvervanger) at the Amsterdam District Court, a part-time judicial appointment. The rechtbank is the Dutch first-instance court for civil, criminal and administrative cases in its region.
From 2000 he worked at Allen & Overy's Amsterdam office, which was established that year when the firm merged with part of the Amsterdam, Brussels and Luxembourg offices of Loeff Claeys Verbeke. Allen & Overy had been founded in London in 1930 by George Allen and Thomas Overy and had grown into an international firm with offices in many countries. Glazener was a member of the firm's limited liability partnership from 2004 to 2016 and was a partner whose practice concentrated on competition law. He headed the firm's competition practice and represented Dutch and international clients before the European Commission, the European Court of Justice, Dutch competition and regulatory authorities and the Dutch courts.
From 2013 until January 2016 he also served as a deputy judge at the Court of Appeal in The Hague (Gerechtshof Den Haag), one of the Dutch appellate courts. Competition matters at that time were overseen in the Netherlands by the Netherlands Competition Authority, known as the NMa and later as part of the ACM, whose decisions could be reviewed by the courts.
Glazener left Allen & Overy on 1 September 2016 to join the judiciary as a judge (raadsheer) at the Court of Appeal in The Hague. He began this career as a judge in training, combining judicial duties with a formal training programme. The judiciary's register lists his appointment as a raadsheer at that court from May 2018 and his appointment as a senior raadsheer from January 2025.
From May 2018 he has also sat as a judge by designation on the Trade and Industry Appeals Tribunal (College van Beroep voor het bedrijfsleven, CBb). The tribunal, based in The Hague, hears appeals against decisions of Dutch economic regulators and is regarded as the highest administrative court for competition matters in the Netherlands.
(Column by Glazener, then a partner at Allen & Overy in Am...)
2015Glazener has served on the board of the Amsterdam Coastal Rowing Center, a Dutch stichting, which is a foundation that pursues a stated purpose through a governing board rather than through shareholders. His documented role in the organization is as a board member, a position he has held since 2012.
