EU digital regulation

Fatima Ghilassene

Avocate at the Lille Bar — European digital law

I advise organisations, independent professionals and individuals on European digital law: platform regulation, personal data, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and intangible assets. I also contribute, as an expert, to international cooperation programmes that examine how European digital rules operate outside the Union.

Working languages: French and English. This page summarises, in English, work otherwise documented in French on this site.

Areas of work

  • Platform regulation and online safety — Digital Services Act, Digital Markets Act, platform-to-business rules: content moderation, ranking transparency, systemic risk assessment, protection of minors, enforcement and remedies.
  • Personal data — General Data Protection Regulation: governance, impact assessments, automated decision-making, international transfers, regulatory proceedings.
  • Artificial intelligence — AI Act: classification of systems, allocation of roles between provider and deployer, transparency obligations, sectoral use.
  • Cybersecurity — NIS 2, DORA, incident handling, notification duties, supply-chain obligations.
  • Intellectual property and intangible assets — software, data, trade marks, designs, contractual allocation of rights.

International cooperation

EU digital rules read from outside the Union

European digital regulation is increasingly used as a reference by legislators, regulators and civil society organisations outside the European Union. The difficulty they face is rarely the text itself. It lies in what implementation costs, in the institutional capacity an instrument such as the Digital Services Act presupposes, and in what has to be adapted when the surrounding legal order is different.

I contribute to that discussion as an expert in cooperation programmes funded by the European Union. What is asked of an expert in that setting is not advocacy for the European model. It is an account of what has worked and what has not — which obligations produced the intended effect and which produced paperwork, which deadlines had to be moved, which mechanisms turned out to presuppose institutions that a country does not necessarily have.

A partner building its own framework has no use for a favourable presentation. It needs the failures as much as the results, because those are what indicate which parts to keep, which to adapt, and which to leave aside. That is also how I write here: two things matter more than a comparison of texts — how enforcement actually works once an obligation exists, and what a rule changes for the people it is meant to protect.

Background

Avocate at the Lille Bar, practising through FG Avocat, a practice dedicated to digital law. More than twenty years of professional experience across innovation, intellectual property, digital transformation and regulatory compliance. Work on the regulation of digital platforms since 2013. Two published studies mark the starting point, both written for the French National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI): L’impression 3D — impacts économiques et enjeux juridiques (Les Dossiers de la Direction des études de l’INPI, no. 2014-04, September 2014, 30 pp.), whose closing part already addressed the liability of intermediaries; and L’impression 3D et la question de la redevance pour copie privée (Études INPI, March 2016), written for the 3D printing working group of the French national anti-counterfeiting committee, which turned on the status of intermediaries and on how a lawful offer could be organised. A related article appeared as Impression 3D et propriété intellectuelle : un problème, des solutions (ParisTech Review, 16 December 2014). The questions were already those that structure platform law today: who answers for what users upload, and what an intermediary owes to those whose rights are affected.

  • Master 2 in business law — contracts, commercial law and liability.
  • Postgraduate diploma in industrial property (DEIPI), CEIPI — University of Strasbourg, trade marks and designs.
  • Executive MBA, EDHEC Business School.
  • Data Compliance Officer, Sciences Po Paris — legal management of data protection.
  • Certificate of the Institut des hautes études de défense nationale (IHEDN).

Selected writing

Analyses published on this site

These analyses are written in French. English versions of the platform-regulation series are being prepared.

What held, and what did not

Three years of the DSA, obligation by obligation: what central enforcement achieved, and where decentralised capacity failed. Written in English.

Is the European model stable?

The AI Act delayed, the data layer contested, the DSA untouched: what the digital omnibus moves. Written in English.

Social media and minors

Article 28 of the DSA, the Commission guidelines of July 2025, and what platforms owe to under-age users.

Contact

Written enquiries in English are welcome. Contact

Fatima Ghilassene, avocate au barreau de Lille, France. Professional title issued in France. Practising through FG Avocat, SARL à associé unique, 13 rue Berthelot, 59000 Lille. Professional rules: Règlement Intérieur National de la profession d’avocat, National Bar Council (Conseil national des barreaux). Full statutory information: mentions légales. Version française : Votre avocate.