Professor Martin Trybus

Time of in person drop in hour: Wednesdays 12 -1 pm
Building: Law
Room number: 206

•  LLM (Wales)
•  PhD (Wales)
•  Referendarexamen (Berlin)
•  Assessorexamen (Düsseldorf)
• Postgraduate Certificate of Academic Practice (Nottingham)

Martin Trybus read law at the Free University of Berlin (Referendarexamen 1994) before completing his studies for a LL.M. in Business Law (1995) and for a Ph.D. (1997) at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He qualified in Germany (Assessorexamen 1999), having also completed a stage with the European Commission in Brussels (1999), before starting as a lecturer at the University of Nottingham (2000). He was visiting scholar at George Washington University Law School in Washington DC (2003), at the University of Cape Town (2004), and visiting fellow at the University of Utrecht (2004). An AHRC Research Leave Award (2003-2004) led to his European Union Law and Defence Integration (2005). At the beginning of his Senior Lectureship at the University of Sheffield (2006) he was seconded as Senior Adviser to the SIGMA programme of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris where he coordinated a number of major studies on public procurement in Europe financed by the European Commission. Professor Trybus joined Birmingham Law School in 2007. He served on the Procurement Review Board of the European Space Agency (ESA) 2010-16 and again from 2020 and was Senior Research Fellow with RAND Europe 2014-16. In 2021 he was appointed Visiting Fellow at the University of Utrecht. 2017-21 Professor Trybus coordinated a Marie Skłodowska Curie (Horizon 2020) Innovative Training Network on the EU Trade and Investment Policy (EUTIP) 2021-2025 is Director of Training on another such Network on Sustainability and Procurement in International, European, and National Systems (SAPIENS NETWORK).

• Public Procurement Law (LLM)
• EU Constitutional Law (LLM)
• Legal Foundations of the European Union (LLB)
• EU Defence and Security Law (LLM)
• Advanced EU Law (LLB)

European Law
European defence and security integration
Public procurement
Professor Trybus provides doctoral supervision and supervision for other research degrees offered by the University of Birmingham. Particular areas of expertise and interest include public procurement law and policy generally (not only in relation to the EU) and European law and policy, especially in relation to defence integration.

He has supervised research students undertaking research in the following areas:

Barriers to a Transatlantic defence procurement market
European defence procurement regulation
The coherence of EU external relations law towards Sub Saharan Africa
Public procurement and State aids
Public procurement review and remedies
The procurement remedy of ineffectiveness in English law
The promotion of SMEs through public procurement law: a model for Africa
The public procurement chapters of Free Trade Agreements of the EU

Find out more - our PhD Law  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

The research of Martin Trybus aims to make a contribution to the understanding and development of the Law of the European Union, especially its economic and constitutional aspects, to establish ‘EU Defence and Security Law’ as a separate legal subject, and to contribute to the understanding and development of public procurement regulation and policy in general and EU public procurement law in particular.

He is the author of three monographs (‘European Defence Procurement Law’, ‘European Union Law and Defence Integration’, and ‘Buying Defence and Security in Europe’) and seven edited collections. He is currently working on research projects relating to the use of public procurement to promote the participation of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises, national security in EU law after the Defence Package, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.  

Listen to Professor Trybus' 2009 inaugural lecture 'The Legal Foundations of a European Army'.

Professor Martin Trybus has been involved in consultancy projects for the Austrian, British, Dutch, Hungarian, and French governments, the European Defence Agency, the European Commission, the European Space Agency, OECD/SIGMA and the OECD. These projects concerned public procurement regulation, in particular public procurement reform in Central and Eastern Europe and the legal aspects of the European armaments market, including in 2007 the translation of the French procurement code into English. In 2008 and 2016 he gave evidence to the European Parliament on the ‘defence package’ of armaments related Directives. Apart from Birmingham he teaches regularly at the International Training Centre of the International Labour Organisation in Turin and the European Institute of Public Administration in Maastricht. 2010-2016 Professor Trybus served the maximum two terms on the Procurement Review Board of the European Space Agency in Paris. For 2014-16 he was also appointed Senior Research Fellow of the think tank RAND Europe and in 2015-2019 served on the jury of the European Law Faculties Association (ELFA) Thesis Prize. He is also serving on the jury of the International Procurement Award Thesis Prize and the Academic Advisory Board of the German Procurement Association Forum Vergabe.

Professor Trybus is the Director of the Institute of European Law, organising, inter alia, The Future of European Law and Policy conference series since 2008. He is a member of the Public Contracts in Legal Globalisation Network, the Procurement Law Academic Network (PLAN), and the European Procurement Law Group. He served on the Peer Review Panel of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and also reviews research funding applications for the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Danish Council for Independent Research, the Czech Science Foundation, and the Netherlands Science Foundation NWO.

Recent impact, outreach and dissemination activities include teaching (1) on the ESDC European Armament Cooperation Expert Level Course of the European Defence Agency (EDA) in Vienna (November 2016), Stockholm (November 2017), Maribor (November 2018), and Zagreb (November 2019) (2) on the Aerospace and Defence Contracts Course organised by the University of Bologna in Turin (June 2016), (3) the Defence Procurement Seminars organised by the European Institute of Public Administration in Maastricht (December 2016 and 2017), and on the Defence Day of the Nordic Procurement Forum in Copenhagen (November 2016), an exchange of views meeting with the contracts team of the Austrian Ministry for Defence and Sport (November 2016), evidence to the European Parliament on the reform of the Defence procurement Directive in Brussels (April 2016), a presentation of research to the EDA Defence Acquisition Experts Network (DAEN) Meeting in Brussels (November 2015), a paper at the Jumbo Meeting on EU defence procurement regulation of the European Defence Agency (EDA) in Brussels (March 2017), a seminar for stakeholders in Albanian defence procurement in Tirana in June 2015 and December 2018, a contribution to the Regional Procurement Conference in Beirut organised by OECD/SIGMA (June 2015), participation in an academic focus group for the (UK) Cabinet Office on the future of public procurement regulation after BREXIT in Nottingham (August 2019), and a presentation at the 10^th anniversary event for the Defence Procurement Directive of the European Commission in Brussels (November 2019).  

Between 2017 and 2021 Professor Trybus serves as Network Coordinator and Director of Research for an Innovative Training Network on EU Trade and Investment Policy (EUTIP) funded by the Marie Skłodowska Curie (Horizon 2020) scheme of the EU. EUTIP provides supervision and training for 15 doctoral research projects on legal, economic, and political aspects of EUTIP and also involves the universities of London City, Nottingham, Passau, Rotterdam, Speyer, Turin, and Zurich, and the think tanks Egmont (Brussels), ifw (Kiel) and CIREM (Paris) – as well as partners as varied as CEN/CENELEC, Business Europe, Baker McKenzie, RAND Europe and the George Washington University.