Yves Poullet

Director of CRID since its creation in 1979 until August 31, 2010, he supervised research in the field of new technologies, more particularly in the areas of privacy, freedoms and the information society, the Internet and the governance.

He has published more than 500 articles and participated as promoter or member of the jury in more than 40 theses in many countries (France, Norway, UK, Italy, Holland, Canada, Spain, …). As regards AI, he has recently published a book : ‘Le RGPD face aux défis de l’intelligence artificielle’ ( Cahier du CRIDS n°49,Larcier 2020) and several articles on ‘AI and Ethics’

He has carried out extensive research for the European Union and the Council of Europe, in particular in the areas of data protection, freedom of expression, Internet governance and intellectual property. For the Council of Europe, we note among others, three reports intended for recommendations in matters of telecommunications, Internet and profiling (writing of reports and recommendations on profiling of 2010 and report for a new recommendation on the same theme in 2019). For the European Commission, he is the main author of the report on the concept of adequacy in cross-border flows and data protection (1998), he carried out for the Commission the analysis of the adequacy of many countries ( US, Switzerland, Australia, Japan,…) (latest in 2010).

He is the co-author of several reports on self-regulation in matters of privacy and electronic commerce and in particular of an ethical-legal report on multimodal data processing. We add a report for the European Parliament on the questions of freedoms posed by the future of the Internet (2009) and, finally, for the Council of Europe and Unesco on Human Rights, Ethics in society of information (2009). Following a conference for the Royal Academy of Belgium, he wrote a book entitled: "Ethics, Human Rights and Digital Society" (in process of publication).

At UCLille, he participates in the work of the ETHICS laboratory, which he joined in 2017 where he works on artificial intelligence, robots, NBICs in particular on the manipulation of genetic data and transhumanism.

He has participated and spoken at various international meetings of data protection commissioners (Brussels, Montreux, Madrid, Brussels (2018), etc.).

He attended, for the Belgian Government, the two 'World Summit of the Information Society' (WSIS Geneva (2003) and Tunis (2006) as representative of Belgium and participated in the first fora of the Information Society. 

Recently he with B. FRENAY produced the report for a new Council of Europe recommendation on profiling (2020) and participated as reporter during the discussion of the Council of Europe consultative Committee about this recommendation. 

He did represent Belgium at the recent intergovernmental discussion about the AI Ethics UNESCO recommendation. (2020), submitted presently for its adoption by the Council of Europe Council of Ministers. 

TEACHING ACTIVITIES:

Yves Poullet was full professor at the Faculty of Law of UNamur (1982-2017) and associate professor at the University of Liège (Ulg) (2000-2012). He has taught subjects such as new technology law, internet regulation, protection of freedoms, comparative law, Roman law, commercial law, and Sources and Principles of Law. Yves Poullet was Dean of the Law Faculty of Namur from 1989 to 1996 and from 2000 to 2006, he was appointed Rector of UNamur from 2010 to 2017 before being appointed Professor Emeritus of UNamur. In 2017, he was appointed associate professor at the Catholic University of Lille.

He set up and chaired the Doctoral Commission of the law faculties of UCL, St LOUIS and UNamur from 2004 to 2008

He has taught at the Universities of Fordham (US), Sao Pablo (Madrid)

OTHER ACTIVITES:

He was a member of the Commission for the Protection of Privacy for 12 years. In addition, he was part of the Legal Advisory Board of DG INFOSOC. He chaired the "Access to Information" Commission. He is the founder of the European Telecoms Forum, ECLIP and FIRILITE. He is also at the origin of ABDI (Belgian Association for Computer Law).

He chairs the editorial board of the Information Technology Law Review (RDTI), published by Larcier (Brussels)

He co-chairs the NAMUR DIGITAL INSTITUTE (Nadi), the interdisciplinary university institute of UNamur, bringing together 150 researchers, computer scientists, managers, ethicists, philosophers, sociologists and jurists

He participated in the drafting of European directives (in particular, directives: data protection and e-commerce), laws (Belgium, Niger, Burkina Faso, etc.) in the field of data protection.

He is a member of the UNESCO sub-commission of the CFWB.

Yves Poullet has been appointed as expert on several occasions with UNESCO, the OECD, the European Parliament and the Council of Europe 

He was the holder of the FRANQUI chair at FUCAM on the theme: “A jurist's journey on the Internet planet.”

Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium (Technology and Society Class)

Member of the Belgian French-speaking Commission ‘Informatique et Communication’ of UNESCO

Member of the Board of Directors of FNRS (2010 = 2017), ARES (2010 = 2017) and AUF since 2016

Member of the Scientific Committee of the Lambert Wilson Chair (Montreal)

Named 'Champion' Digital Wallonia (2019)

He has been nominated as vice chairman of The IFAP Programme (UNESCO) and chairman of the Info ethics Working Group, dealing especially with the AI ethical challenges

He is member of the Artificial Intelligence Ethical Working Group  (AIEWG) set up by the Technical University of Munich (TUM)