Executive Committee

The Executive Committee is made up of two co-leading members and represents the Court of Arbitration for Nazi-looted Cultural Property nationally and internationally. One key element of this task is participation in the Network of European Restitution Commissions on Nazi-Looted Art.

The Executive Committee of the Court of Arbitration for Nazi-looted Cultural Property consists of Frau Dr. Elisabeth Steiner and former Federal Constitutional Court Judge Peter Müller. The Executive Committee is appointed for a term of five years. Appointments are made by mutual agreement between the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, the Länder, the national associations of local authorities, the Central Council of Jews in Germany and the Jewish Claims Conference.

Elisabeth Steiner is an attorney at law hailing from Vienna. She studied law and business administration in Vienna and subsequently ran her own law firm in Vienna for almost 20 years. In 2001, she was appointed as the Austrian judge at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg; from 2011 to 2015, she was Vice-President of Section I of the court. Since March 2016, she has resumed her work as an attorney at law in Vienna. She has taught at renowned faculties  worldwide, including Stanford, Vienna, Graz, Hong Kong and Beijing. Since 2019, she has been a member of the International Council of Arbitration for Sport (ICAS) and, since May 2019, has served as Vice President of the Appeals Division of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). She was a co-negotiator of the 2001 Washington Agreement, which etsablished a legal framework for compensation payments for crimes and injustices committed during World War II, and secured compensation for over 320,000 former forced laborers from Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia.

Peter Müller was born in Saarland. He studied law and political science in Bonn and Saarbrücken. After passing his second state examination, he worked as a judge from 1986, first at the Ottweiler District Court and later at the Saarbrücken Regional Court. From 1990 to 2011, he was a member of the Saarland state parliament and led the CDU parliamentary group from 1994 to 1999. Between 1995 and 2011, he was state chairman of the CDU Saar and a member of the CDU federal Executive Commitee. From 1999 to 2011, he served as Prime Minister of the state of Saarland. In 2011, he was elected to the Second Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court and held this office until 2023. Since 2024, he has been writing as a columnist for the Süddeutsche Zeitung and he holds an honorary doctorate from Keio University in Tokyo. Peter Müller is married and has three children