Arcep' College & departments

Chairwoman and College members biographies

© ARCEP - Brigitte Baudesson for the photos of the Chairwoman and all the members of the Arcep College

Laure de La Raudière - Chairwoman of Arcep

A graduate of the École Normale Supérieure, and a telecommunications engineer, Laure de La Raudière began her career with France Telecom – Orange in 1990 where she held a series of positions: Manager of the “Business Customers” department for the Paris Sud regional division, Director of “Key Accounts” then Director for the Eure-et-Loir department. After having been an associate in a data mining start-up, Pertinence Data Intelligence, in 2003 she founded Madisy-Conseil, then became executive director of Navigacom, two ICT consulting firms whose core clientele is large “user” enterprises.

Since 2007, Laure de La Raudière has been the Deputy for the Eure-et-Loir (Agir Ensemble), and a member of the National Assembly Economic Affairs Committee. Strongly committed to the multifarious issues surrounding digital technology, she was a co-rapporteur for several information reports. She has also been an elected local representative in Saint-Denis-des-Puits since 2001 and departmental councillor for the Eure-et-Loir since 2015.

Since 2018, Laure de La Raudière has been the co-chair of the National Assembly’s “Cybersecurity and Digital Sovereignty” parliamentary task force.

Laure de La Raudière was appointed, on the proposal of the President of the Republic, president of the Arcep, by decree published in the Journal Officiel on 28 January 2021, for a six-year term.

• Twitter :  @lauredlr

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Maya Bacache

Today, the President of the National Assembly, Richard Ferrand, appointed Maya Bacache to the Arcep Executive Board, starting on 1 October 2019.

A graduate of the École normale supérieure (Ulm), with a post-graduate degree in economics and social sciences, and a PhD in economics, Maya Bacache is a professor of economics at Telecom ParisTech. She was a member of the Economic Analysis Council (CAE), the Employment Advisory Council (COE) and of CSA Lab. She was also a member of Advisory board on electronic communications in 2012. Maya Bacache is currently a member of France’s High Council of Public Finances.

Public spending and government reform are among her areas of research, along with the digital economy and digital tech regulation in particular.

Maya Bacache succeeds Martine Lombard who has chosen to terminate her tenure in order to devote herself to her new assignment: she has been appointed President of the jury for the national competitive examination for aggregation in public law.

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Emmanuel Gabla

A former student at the Ecole Polytechnique, a graduate of the Ecole nationale supérieure des télécommunications (ENST), and a chief telecommunications engineer, Emmanuel Gabla has been Head of the Economic Section of France's embassy in Norway since 2016.
Emmanuel Gabla began his career in 1993 at the Ministry of PTT, who prepared the 1996 Act that opened the telecoms sector up to competition. Starting in 1997, Emmanuel Gabla served as an advisor on telecoms, the information society, postal affairs and industrial aspects of the internal market to the Permanent Representation of France to the European Union, as technical advisor to the Prime Minister, Jean Pierre Raffarin, in charge of telecoms and postal affairs, industrial property and space, and the head of the Technologies and Information Society department at the Directorate-General for Enterprise.

From 2009 to 2015, Emmanuel Gabla was a member of Board of French broadcasting authority, CSA, and a member of the General Council for the Economy, Industry, Energy and Technologies from 2015 to 2016.

As of 30 September 2021, Emmanuel Gabla is elected Vice-President of BEREC for the year 2022.

He will be taking over from Pierre-Jean Benghozi whose term as a member of the Arcep Executive Board has come to an end. 

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Sarah Jacquier Pelissier

Sarah Jacquier Pelissier holds a PhD from the Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas, and a Master’s in telecommunications and new media management from the Université Paris Dauphine. She began her career in 2001 as a lawyer with the firms Baker & McKenzie and later Hogan Lovells. In 2010, she was appointed legal director of HADOPI before joining the European Commission in 2014, as the national expert seconded to the Directorate-General for Communication Networks, Content and Technology (DG CNECT). In the "copyright" unit, she contributed to the reform of the neighbouring right of press publishers.

Since 2018, she has been an advisor on platform and digital law to the head of the legal and international affairs department of the Ministry of Culture. She is a member of the Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (France’s National Centre for Cinema/CNC) Regulatory oversight committee since 2021.

Sarah Jacquier Pelissier has been appointed to the Arcep Executive Board by Decree of the President of the Republic, dated 23 March 2023 and is replacing Monique Liebert-Champagne.

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François Lions

A graduate of the École Polytechnique, François Lions is a member of the Corps of Engineers. He began his career at France Telecom where he held technical, sales and management positions in the areas of specialised networks, network information and traffic management systems and, lastly, regional affairs.

In 1992, François Lions joined the Directorate of General Regulation, DRG (Direction de la Réglementation Générale), and later the Directorate-General of Posts and Telecommunications, DGPT (Direction générale des postes et télécommunications), where he contributed to the process of opening the telecommunications sector up to competition. In particular, he implemented the first price and accounting supervision mechanisms.

François Lions joined Arcep when it was first created, in January 1997, heading up the Economics and Competition department, and later the Economics and Forward-planning department, up until 2004. In 2005, he was appointed Deputy Director-General, and also became head of the Postal activities department in 2011.

François Lions is coming to replace Philippe Distler whose term as a member of the Executive Board has come to an end. Arcep applauds the tremendous contribution he made to the Authority’s work. Philippe Distler participated in Arcep’s creation in 1997 and had played a major role ever since. 

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Xavier Merlin

An engineer of the “Corps des Mines,” a graduate of the École Polytechnique and the Institut d’études politiques de Paris, Xavier Merlin had been the head of the Inter-ministerial task force on simplifying businesses’ administrative procedures and legal publicity since 2019.

Xavier Merlin began his career in 1996 at the Ministry of the Economy, Finance and Industry’s Department of Forecasting, where he was in charge of economic studies on the internet, audiovisual media, telecommunications and competition. In 1998, he joined that ministry’s Department of External Economic Relations, and tasked with multilateral e-commerce, audiovisual media, telecommunications and postal negotiations. Appointed technical advisor to Catherine Tasca, then France’s Minister of Culture and Communication, in 2000, he became Director of European and International Affairs at the French National Centre of Cinema (CNC) in 2002. In 2008, the joined the Directorate-General for Enterprise (DGE) as the Assistant Director of Institutional relations, in the areas of information technologies and the information society. Assistant Director of Regulation and European and multilateral affairs for the DGE starting in 2009, he was appointed head of the Territorial, European and International Action Department in 2014.

Appointment with effect from 12 January 2024, upon designation by the President of the Assemblée nationale on 22 December 2023, in succession to Serge Abiteboul.

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Marie-Christine Servant

A telecoms engineer by training, Marie-Christine SERVANT joined the firm Transpac in 1993 to take part in the deployment of its European subsidiaries, at a time when the data transmission business was being opened up to competition. In 1998 she was put in charge of implementing interconnection agreements for WorldCom France (later Verizon), and participated in the rollout of the first dial-up internet access solutions.

After a stint with La Poste, where she was the Director of the plan to overhaul registered letter processes and underlying IS, in 2006 she joined the Banque des Territoires to assist local authorities in the Ile-de-France region with their digital development projects.

She also headed up the Yvelines Departmental Council’s Digital Task Force from 2012 to 2014, as well as the Société du Grand Paris Digital Task Force from 2019 to 2023.  

Appointment with effect from 16 February 2024, upon designation by the President of the Senat on 4 February 2024, in succession to Joëlle Cottenye.

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