Yiannos Tolias

He is a lawyer at the European Commission (European Union). He works in the legal teams that initiate infringement actions and bring legal actions before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) against EU Member States for violations of EU law in the area of free movement of goods.

Yiannos also works in the team of the European Commission responsible for the European Union (EU) Products Liability Directive (Directive 85/374/EEC). This team currently looks at the possible adaptations of applicable laws at EU level relating to new technologies including AI.

Prior to joining the European Commission, Yiannos was an Assistant Professor in EU law at the Universities of Edinburgh and Dundee in Scotland, UK. He graduated with a Ph.D. in EU law from the University of Edinburgh and thereafter he has been a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh until he was appointed as an Assistant Professor.

Yiannos’ current research interests also include the question concerning the limits of Article 34 of the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) (this provision is the loosely analogue to the US Negative Commerce Clause); the assessment of proportionality of EU Member States’ legislative measures that erect obstacles to trade in violation of Article 34 TFEU in order to protect public interests. Particularly, he is interested in the assessment of proportionality of national measures that restrict trade in order to protect public health; a recent case that Yiannos worked on in this area was the Scottish case before the Court of Justice of the EU concerning Scottish legislation introducing a minimum price per unit of alcohol (Case C-333/14, Scotch Whisky Association); finally, Yiannos’ research interests and work include the question of whether EU legislative measures provide for complete, partial or minimum harmonization and the legal implications.