Director General

Dr. Natalie Harsdorf LL.M.

Professional Career:

In November 2023, Dr. Natalie Harsdorf LL.M. (born 1985) was appointed Director General of the Federal Competition Authority by the President of Austria upon the recommendation of the federal government. Prior to this, Dr. Harsdorf LL.M. had already been managing the Federal Competition Authority in her role as Deputy Director General and Head since December 1, 2021.

She has been working with the Austrian Federal Competition Authority in various capacities since 2009, including roles such as Head of the Office, Deputy Head, Head of the Legal Department, and as an investigator and task force leader.

Dr. Harsdorf also served as a national expert at the Directorate-General for Competition in Brussels and at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. She completed her law studies in Vienna, Dublin, and Bruges, and earned a doctorate in civil procedure law. At the University of Vienna, she worked as a research assistant at the Institute for European Law, International Law, and Comparative Law.

She is a lecturer on Competition Law in Vienna and Innsbruck. Dr. Natalie Harsdorf is a co-editor of a comprehensive commentary on Austrian competition law, published by Linde Verlag in December 2022. In 2018, she co-founded the Women in Competition Law Network Austria.

In 2022, Dr. Harsdorf received the Award for Lawyer of the Year, becoming the first woman in public service to receive this honor. In 2018, she was elected to the OECD's Competition Bureau. Additionally, Natalie Harsdorf was unanimously elected chair of the OECD Working Party on Competition and Regulation in October 2024. She took up the role on 1 January 2025, the first Austrian to do so. In 2023, she was elected by the ECN to serve for two years on the High-Level Group of the Digital Markets Act.