TAV Macedonia Legal Affairs Manager Emilija Evtimova-Spaseska discusses her journey from law firm partner to in-house counsel and her role in overseeing legal operations for Skopje and Ohrid airports.
CEELM: Let’s start with your career leading up to your current role.
Evtimova-Spaseska: After graduating from the Law Faculty Justinian Primus in Skopje, I started working as an Intern in a law firm in Skopje for four years. In that time, I rose through the ranks to Junior Partner. My work as an external consultant provided me with insights into how clients’ issues are solved within a team of lawyers. We would come across situations in which we’d work for five days to respond to a one-sentence request from the client – mainly due to not having on-site knowledge of all possible factors, thus creating a huge legal opinion covering aspects that were not even part of the initial request. Still, all our clients were very satisfied with the broad feedback we provided. The main challenge in that type of work for me personally was not having all the information and the implicit risk of providing legal advice that could steer the clients in a direction that was not in their best interest. In the law firm, I learned the importance of waivers which are sometimes longer than the legal opinion itself. That’s not just for the protection of the law firm, but more for the protection of the client. The end goal of the waiver is “you provided us with this information and we are providing the legal opinion only based on that information. Should you have other circumstances which you did not or do not wish to disclose to us, we are not certain that this legal opinion is applicable at all.” The variety of work I had the privilege to work on in the law firm was amazing – preparations of catalogs and data rooms, due diligence, M&A, registrations and changes of companies, undertakings of property, assets, leases, and sale-purchases of aircraft, supporting in registration of trademarks, legal advice in regards to finance, supporting the preparation of tender procedures, etc.
During my time with the law firm, I took the bar exam and the appropriate licenses for IPPO protection procedures.
Following my experience in the law firm, I became an in-house lawyer for a major IT company, then for a fast-money transfer company, and currently, I’m holding the position of Legal Affairs Manager at TAV Macedonia – the airport operator of Skopje International Airport and Ohrid, St. Paul the Apostle Airport.
Our mother company is TAV Airports, a global brand in financing, developing, and operating airports. As a member of French Groupe ADP, we have a global footprint with a presence in 110 airports in 31 countries. Through its subsidiaries, the group provides integrated services in all areas of airport operations, including duty-free, food and beverage, ground handling, IT, security, and commercial area services. TAV Airports provided services to 96 million passengers in 2023. The company is quoted on the Istanbul Stock Exchange, featured on the BIST Sustainability Index, and committed to achieving net zero emissions in 2050. With no doubt, we can say that TAV Macedonia is part of a huge and complex mechanism that joins different departments and a variety of experts in many different fields.
CEELM: What was the biggest shock when transitioning to the in-house world? On the flip side, what was the most pleasant surprise?
Evtimova-Spaseska: Personally, I did not feel a big shock in the transition. I have always been a dynamic person and following everything and keeping up with the requirements of the new industry was a great challenge. In the law firm, we had clients from different industries while now I have one client with different areas of legal needs.
The aviation business is a big, robust, and simply complex industry that includes almost all aspects of law – both in domestic and international areas. Having the opportunity to practice various areas of the law for cargo and customs regulations, border control, fire-fighting, medical, and labor relations, all for aviation purposes creates a unique environment for practicing law. Fitting together different laws and managing industry changes resulting from economic conditions that affect airports is almost like compiling a big puzzle where each part must be precisely shaped to fit the big picture for a safe and pleasant stay at our port.
CEELM: What has been keeping you and your in-house team busy over the last 12 months?
Evtimova-Spaseska: There is a special kind of magic in everyday work, knowing that the journey of all passengers commences or ends at the airport where I work. My administration and especially operations colleagues’ work and my own are part of the effort for the passengers to have a more pleasant and happy journey during their stay at our port. All efforts from all departments and companies working at the airport are in perfect sync to increase the happiness of the passengers.
The legal department has the best customers – the management with all departments and all our colleagues. The support requested from our side in the various aspects of the work varies from compiling and/or reviewing various types of agreements, regulations, decisions, and procedures, to legal aspects in project finance when it comes to the company’s growth, initiatives for changes in the laws, i.e., corporate affairs activities, concession agreement rights, to litigations, administrative proceedings, and all related proceedings we are conducting or following up on.
CEELM: How do you decide if you are outsourcing a project or using internal/in-house resources?
Evtimova-Spaseska: The two law firms we work with have been engaged for over 10 years by us. Since our in-house team is on the rather small side, we use them for anything and everything. Having law firms that know us and the business to the core enables us to consult them on complex projects like concession agreements to simple drafting of service agreements if the whole team is unavailable.
CEELM: What do you foresee to be the main challenges for GCs in North Macedonia in the near/mid future?
Evtimova-Spaseska: The separation of Yugoslavia and the transition period of the Republic of Macedonia to now North Macedonia left consequences that are both useful and challenging. While we strive to benefit from modern technologies and utilize them in every step of our work, we still have to go in person to certain institutions, submit written requests for various matters, and come back after the appropriate time to take a written document. However, there have been many liberations from paperwork in certain areas and the legislators are planning further improvements bit by bit.
With the new Ministry for Digital Transformation and our country’s EU accession aspirations, I believe that the initiatives for digitalization of procedures will proceed on a fast track.
The digital transformation of the whole juridical system will be one of the main challenges in the forthcoming years and I’m cheering for a successful transition in this area. Our generation’s efforts will meet the new generation’s needs, resulting in simplified legal procedures and, thus, smoother processes of corporate law.
This article was originally published in Issue 11.10 of the CEE Legal Matters Magazine. If you would like to receive a hard copy of the magazine, you can subscribe here.
