Our Scholars 2024 – Đorđe Dimitrijević

Your current occupation and country of work?
I am an attorney at law and Head of Real estate in Dimitrijevic & Partners, a leading full-service law firm in Bosnia and Herzegovina („BH”). My areas of expertise include Real estate law, Litigation, Banking & Finance Law, Contract law and Insurance law. I have more than 10 years of experience advising local and international clients, including banks, private funds, large corporations etc. In my work, I quite often co-operate with lawyers from big law firms from EU countries and UK.

How you use European law in your work?
As BH is not an EU member state, we do not regularly use European law in our work. However, pursuant to the Stabilisation and Association Agreement executed between the European Communities and BH, BH shall endeavour to ensure that its existing laws and future legislation will be gradually made compatible with the EU acquis. Furthermore, BH applied for EU membership in February 2016 and was granted EU candidate status in December 2022.
Having abovementioned in mind, European law is something that BH lawyers should be aware of if we want to be fully prepared to provide good legal services to our clients once BH becomes an EU member state. Furthermore, law is dynamic and evolving. Thus, we, as BH attorneys, should quite often address to legislator that certain matters must be harmonized with the European law – this especially during the procedure of adoption of new laws and if such harmonization benefits the interests of our clients. In order to do so, we need to learn European law.
Finally, once certain BH laws are harmonized with the European law (which is already the case in some legal areas) we, BH attorneys, should be aware of interpretation of the respective European law by the competent EU courts and administrative authorities – this to properly interpret BH laws that are harmonized with European law.

How did you benefit from the scholarship and the knowledge gained?
I gained valuable insights in various matters regarding strategic litigation and met wonderful colleagues from all around Europe. Furthermore, I became aware of certain extraterritorial effects of European law, especially with respect to the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. This valuable knowledge that I acquired will help me in my daily work.
I am hoping to stay in touch with some of the colleagues I met on the course and to have the opportunity to co-operate with them in the future in relation to various legal aspects.