Guillermo Passas Varo

Education

I studied two years of Translation and Interpreting (German and Chinese) before reading Law at the University of Granada, where I graduated after an Erasmus year at the Freie Universität Berlin and a diploma in Anglo-American law; my dissertation dealt with the reform of Article 135 of the Spanish Constitution and European budgetary stability. I went on to a Master's in International Trade Management at ESIC/EIG, an LLM in Legal Practice at the UOC and an LLM in Advanced International and European Studies at the University of Granada. I completed that base with Advanced European Law at King's College London, European Business Law & WTO Practice at the Université Saint-Louis Bruxelles with Van Bael & Bellis, and the Diploma in the Law of the European Union of the Academy of European Law at the European University Institute in Florence, awarded by examination. I am now starting my doctorate.

Track record

In 2012, still an undergraduate, I won my first appeal before the High Court of Justice of Andalusia, and by my third year I was advising on industrial property and trade marks at European level. In 2014 I started in public affairs, took part in debates on industrial policy and digitalisation in the European Union and, from 2016, lived between Granada and other European capitals advising on Euro-African and Euro-American international investments. Since my admission to the Bar in 2019 I have led civil, commercial, administrative and employment matters, with litigation before the Spanish Supreme Court, the Audiencia Nacional and the Constitutional Court, and claims above €300,000. I have represented victims of crypto fraud by tracing the funds on the blockchain, I advise companies entering Spain and the European Union and I help those who build or deploy artificial intelligence systems comply with the AI Act. I have been an active participant in the Brussels decision-making ecosystem: I moderated the European Liberal Forum hackathon on industrial policy and innovation and edited and introduced the discussion paper that came out of it, A European Industrial Policy: Preparing the Ground for Innovation (2021).

How I work

Since I was a child I have liked using computers to build things, and I read code for the first time at nine; today that means I read the code, audit data architectures and talk to the technical team without intermediaries. I run the firm on Lean principles: a strict viability filter, a single invoice at the outset and no overhead the client has to pay for. I speak six languages and work in four: Spanish, English, German and French.