Profile
PhD, Louvain University
Prior joining the Geneva Graduate Institute as Assistant Professor of International Law, Alice Pirlot was a Senior Research Fellow in Law at the Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation and a Research Fellow of the National Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS) at the University of Louvain. Alice’s main expertise lies at the intersection between tax, environmental, EU and international trade law. Her publications cover a wide range of topics, including carbon border adjustment measures, the taxation of the energy sector, the interactions between tax policy and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Selection of the publications
- A. Pirlot, “Carbon Border Adjustment Measures: A Straightforward Multi-Purpose Climate Change Instrument?” (2022) 34(1) Journal of Environmental Law pp. 25-52.
- A. Pirlot, Environmental Border Tax Adjustments and International Trade Law: Fostering Environmental Protection (2017) Edward Elgar Publishing, 352 pp.
- A. Pirlot, “Don’t Blame It on WTO Law: An Analysis of the Alleged WTO Incompatibility of Destination Based Taxes” (2019) 23(1) Florida Tax Review pp. 432-493.
- A. Pirlot, “International Taxation & Environmental Protection”, in: Y. Brauner (ed.), Handbook on International Tax Law (2020) Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 258-277.
- A. Pirlot, “A Legal Analysis of the Mutual Interactions between the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) & Taxation”, in: C. Brokelind & S. van Thiel (eds.), Tax Sustainability in an EU and International Context (2020) IBFD, pp. 87-111.
current research project
Alice Pirlot is currently developing a new research agenda on ‘tax and climate change’. Her objective is to investigate the internationalisation of carbon tax laws. Over the past years, international organisations have been increasingly involved in the governance of carbon taxes (IMF, OECD, UN, World Bank) and the promotion of proposals for a global carbon price (mainly IMF and OECD). This raises many questions in international law, which I would like to explore, among which questions in terms of regime interaction and conflicts of norms. Will the internationalisation of carbon taxes lead to a clash between the tax and climate change regimes? What does it mean in terms of global justice, both from distributive and procedural perspectives? Importantly, this research agenda will also allow her to examine questions related to the nature and role of international tax law. The internationalisation of carbon taxation might confirm a change of paradigm in international taxation: from an institution aimed at allocating taxing rights between countries, international tax law might be moving towards the regulation of global regulatory challenges.