European Democracy Shield: strengthening information, defending democracy

Silvia Boccardi

Giornalista

Marie-Helene Boulanger

Marie-Hélène Boulanger is Head of the Democracy, Anti-Corruption, Citizenship Rights and Free Movement Unit at the European Commission in Brussels. She began her career in the field of data protection at the University of Namur. She then spent five years at the Belgian Data Protection Authority, two of which years as its Secretary and head of service. From there, she joined Directorate-General Internal Market of the European Commission as a national expert at the data protection unit, then moving to the Directorate General of in charge of Justice and Home affairs, where she was responsible for the legal team of the unit responsible for large scale IT systems and also specialised in the policy aspects of the Schengen Information System. From 2009 to 2014, she headed the data protection unit in charge, among others of the reform of EU data protection law. From 2014, she was the head of the unit in charge of citizenship rights and free movement, delivering the Commission’s priorities to support free movement in the coronavirus pandemic through the EU digital Covid certificates, monitoring the implementation of the EU-UK withdrawal agreement, leading proposals in the field of democracy and electoral integrity, including political advertising and the participation rights of mobile EU citizens and the Recommendation against SLAPPs, as well as the many priorities set out in the EU citizenship report, such as improvements to how consular protection rights are implemented, and a common format for EU Member State ID cards.

Matthew Caruana Galizia

Matthew Caruana Galizia is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and software engineer. He worked at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) for five years, where he founded the organisation’s Data and Research Unit in 2014 and was a lead engineer on six major investigations: Offshore Leaks, Swiss Leaks, Luxembourg Leaks, Fatal Extraction, Panama Papers, and Paradise Papers. The Unit’s core work on the Panama Papers, which supported the investigations of hundreds of journalists worldwide, led to ICIJ and Süddeutsche Zeitung winning the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting in 2017. Matthew left the ICIJ in 2018 to continue working on the case around the assassination of his mother, Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was an investigative journalist killed by a car bomb near her home in Malta in October 2017. Matthew has been a tireless advocate for justice for his mother’s murder, leading efforts to galvanise the international community and hold the Maltese author...

Pina Picierno

È la seconda donna a ricoprire il ruolo di vicepresidente dell’Europarlamento per l’Italia dopo Roberta Angelilli. Eletta eurodeputata con il Partito democratico, è stata deputata italiana per due legislature, dal 2008 al 2014.

Federico Varese

Federico Varese is Professor of Sociology in the Centre d'études européennes et de politique comparée (Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics), Sciences Po, Paris, a Senior Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, and the Director of the Extra-legal Institute. Between 2021 and 2023, he was Director of the Department of Sociology at Oxford University. His main area of research is the study of organised crime. He has written on the Russian mafia, Soviet criminal history, migration of mafia groups, Somali piracy, the dynamics of altruistic behaviour, and the application of Social Network Analysis to criminology. Currently, he is involved in research projects on the governance dimension of organised gangs in the UK, cybercrime markets, the Russian mafia and substandard medicines. He holds an Advanced ERC Grant, titled CRIMGOV, held at Sciences Po and Oxford University, for the period 2022-2026. He is the author of four monographs - The Russian Mafia (OUP, 2001), Mafias on the Move (PUP, 2011), Mafia Life (2018), La Russia in quattro criminali (2022) - and the editor of Organized Crime (Routledge, 2010). His books have been translated into eight different languages. He has published papers in journals such as Social Networks, The British Journal of Criminology, Law and Society Review, Crime and Justice, Archives Européenes de Sociologie, Political Studies, Cahiers du Monde Russe, Rationality & Society, European Sociological Review, and Trends in Organized Crime , among others. He contributes to The Times Literary Supplement and, in Italy, the daily La Repubblica. His work has been featured in The Economist, Newsweek, The BBC News & World Service, ABC, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Monkeycage Blog and Freakonomics blog , among others. Mafias on the Move was the Recipient of The International Association for the Study of Organized Crime 2012 Outstanding Publication Award. The Russian Mafia was The Co-Recipient of ED A. HEWETT BOOK PRIZE awarded by The American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. Mafia Life has won the first prize for non-fiction of the Niccolini Prize. For his work, Varese has also won the Bernagozzi Prize from the city of Portomaggiore, Italy. He has collaborated with the writer John le Carré on several projects and he is curating a major exhibition on him and his work (with Andy Hurrell). Professor Varese holds degrees from Bologna University, Cambridge University and Oxford University. He was a Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, and a visiting professor at Yale University, City University of Hong Kong and Milan University. He is currently on the editorial board of The British Journal of Criminology and is a past Editor of Global Crime.

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