Petra Mahnič has been a member of the EU Council Legal Service since 2004, following her graduate studies in law in Ljubljana and Amsterdam, postgraduate studies of EU law at the College of Europe in Bruges (LLM), and a tenure as legal adviser in the Constitutional Court of Slovenia. Her areas of specialization include EU common foreign and security policy, common security and defence policy, EU restrictive measures, and public international law. She provides legal advice to various Council preparatory bodies, and acts as Council agent before the EU Courts. She is a co-organizer of executive training seminars on EU restrictive measures at the European University Institute of Florence (School of Transnational Governance), Italy, and a visiting professor at the College of Europe (Legal Department), Belgium.