Maximiliano Mendez Parra is a very experienced international trade economist and former trade official in the Secretary of Agriculture of Argentina with more than 13 years of professional experience on the field of trade policy analysis. He has extensive knowledge on the EU preferential regimes and had participated in numerous projects and has written on the subject for the European Commission, UK Dfid and The Commonwealth Secretariat among other bodies.

He has worked in numerous projects on the analysis of free trade agreements for different organisations such as the IADB, FAO, UNCTAD, the European Commission and UK Dfid among other institutions. Since moving to research activity he has had 6 consecutive years working assessing the impact of regional trade agreements on developing countries, including ECOWAS, EPAS, EU India, EU-Mercosur and EU-US. In particular, he has worked extensively on the analysis of the effects of preferential regimes and free trade areas on excluded countries such as the EU-US TTIP, EU-India and the integration in South-East Asia.