Europe's to-do list: realigning perspectives on the European project

Rim-Sarah Alouane is a French legal scholar and commentator. Her research focuses on religious freedom, civil liberties, constitutional law and human rights across Europe and North America, with a special focus on France. Alouane has explored these issues as a guest lecturer at Georgetown University, Harvard Law School, Sorbonne and Sciences Po, among others. Her works have been published by the Atlantic Council, the Brookings Institution, The New York Times and Foreign Policy magazine. Alouane also regularly appears on TV and radio outlets worldwide, including NPR, Al Jazeera, BBC and France24, to discuss issues such as discrimination, human rights and politics. Notably, she has been vocal about the rise of far-right politics and anti-Muslim hatred, specifically providing her expert commentary on bodily autonomy given policy developments regarding bans on hijabs and burkinis in France.

Malcolm Byrne is an Irish politician for the centrist Fianna Fáil party (ALDE) and served in local government before entering parliament. He is his party’s spokesperson on further and higher education, research, innovation and science. He speaks and writes regularly on regulating technology as well as the importance of the arts, sport and community volunteerism. He served on the Senate Brexit Committee. Previously, Malcolm worked as the head of communications and public affairs at the Higher Education Authority, the statutory agency in Ireland that allocates public funding to higher education and advises the government on higher education and research policy. Having worked for various lobbying and representative organisations throughout his career, Byrne was also the first commercial manager at myhome.ie, Ireland’s most successful property website. Outside of his professional career, he has completed 37 marathons, including another Dublin marathon last week.

Maud Caillaux is Co-Founder of Green-Got, a French neo-bank that channels funding towards the green transition. Customers get ecological bank accounts where savings contribute to ocean clean-up, re-forestation, sustainable agriculture, renewable energies and other environmental projects. The goal is to empower all savers to make money while investing in transition. “No longer will a single cent go to finance fossil fuels,” affirms Caillaux. Founded in 2020, Green-Got is expanding rapidly, with €100mn under management and transactions totalling more than €1bn. The bank went international by moving into Belgium in 2023 and, in November 2024, raised €5mn in 148 minutes during a record-breaking crowdfunding drive.

Before co-founding the Jacques Delors Friends of Europe Foundation in 2025, Geert Cami co-founded Friends of Europe, the action-oriented think tank, which launched both its citizens’ platform Debating Europe and its European Young Leaders Programme in 2011. Geert also founded TownHall Europe (the Davignon Centre for New Leadership) and co-founded the Africa-Europe Foundation (AEF) in partnership with the Mo Ibrahim Foundation (MIF). Geert headed the European conference-organising, press relations and publishing company Forum Europe for more than ten years, and has worked for the European Commission‘s humanitarian office since 2023.

Francesca Cavallo is a bestselling author of children’s books, entrepreneur, and founder and CEO of Undercats Media. She is the co-creator of ‘Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls’, a collection of 100 tales of extraordinary women that has become a publishing sensation. Cavallo’s career began in theatre, where she worked as both a manager for a theatre company and as a playwright. In 2012, she moved to California to co-found a children’s media start-up called Timbuktu Labs, Inc. Since then, she has authored nine picture books that have been translated into more than 47 languages. Her most recent international bestseller is the children’s book ‘Doctor Li and the Crown-wearing Virus’.

Currently serving as Ireland’s Minister for Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, Jack Chambers is also Deputy Leader of Fianna Fáil and played a leading role in the party’s success in legislative elections held in November 2024. Previously, he was notably appointed as Ireland’s youngest Minister for Finance in over a century. A medical doctor, Chambers was first elected to Parliament in 2016 at 25, its youngest member. He has held ministerial positions in the departments of transport, defence, and environment, climate and communications, as well as serving in Government.

Silvia is a young economist and entrepreneur specialising in game theory and interest groups. She has extensive experience as a strategist in auction design. In 2008, she co-founded Auctionomics, a high-stakes auction consulting and software firm with clients ranging from governments to Fortune 500 companies. Silvia has acted as project manager on several high-stakes auctions in Australia, Canada, and the United States, in many European countries, and in Africa and Latin America. She is also the co-founder of xSwan, an interactive version of eBay that allows charities to raise more money via online auctions. Silvia frequently speaks at major universities both in the United States (including Berkeley and Harvard) and around the world.

Xavier is an engineer in computer science who is passionate about the digital renaissance. In 1999, while still at secondary school, he founded Tribal, a site that gathered student content from around Belgium for publication in a magazine that was distributed to 30,000 students nationwide. Ten years later, he co-founded Storify, a social media curation platform that enables users to create stories or timelines using content from social media such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Storify is now used by top brands, organisations and publishers around the world, including CNN, the New York Times, the United Nations and the White House. More recently, he co-founded OpenCollective, a company that enables groups to collect and spend money transparently without having to create a new bank account.

In his current role, Pedro Miguel da Costa e Silva is Brazil’s chief representative to the European Union. A career diplomat, he has worked for Brazilian missions in Geneva, Santiago, La Paz, Madrid and Ottawa. In Brazil, he has also served at the Office of the Presidency as the director of the economics department and as secretary of bilateral and regional negotiations in the Americas at the Division for International Trade. In this role, he was also the national coordinator for MERCOSUR and coordinator for the National Commission of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization.

Ella Dvornik is an award-winning luxury travel, fashion and lifestyle blogger from Croatia. Her blog, I Am Ella, was voted among the top three blogs at the UK Blog Awards. She is also the Founder of Manijak, a digital media service for influencers. She has worked with over 400 brands worldwide to create creative content and has featured in nearly all media outlets in Croatia and the Western Balkan region. Since she first created her Facebook profile over a decade ago, her online audience has grown from strength to strength and now includes more than 370k Facebook followers and over half a million Instagram followers.

Lukasz is the CEO and Founding Partner of Montis Capital Fund. There, Lukasz oversees the formulation of financial and operational strategies. Previously, he was head of the Marguerite Fund office for the Central and Eastern Europe and member of the management board for the Marguerite Fund 2020 for Energy, Climate Change and Infrastructure in Luxembourg. He is also on the supervisory board of Pomeranka Development, InvestGas and Energa Operator in Poland, and of PZU Ukraine Insurance Company and Kredobank, also in Ukraine. Lukasz began his career as an adviser in the European Parliament, focusing on energy policy and security as well as EU relations with Russia and Ukraine.

Since 2021, Megi Fino has been Albania’s Deputy Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs. She is at the forefront of advancing her country’s European Union membership process as a negotiator for the acquis Chapter 31. Fino has been engaged at the UN and regional bodies to promote support for Ukraine and regional cooperation. She was previously an Integrity Consultant for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) focused on local governance reform and worked as a regulatory expert at Vodafone Albania. A lawyer by training, she includes Chinese among her many languages.

A Kosovar innovator and entrepreneur, Liza is shaping public discourse around diaspora and civic engagement. As Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Diaspora, she advocated for the advancement of Kosovo’s policies, legislation and institutional approaches regarding diaspora engagement. She founded the Kosovar committee for the United World Colleges (UWC), a global movement that promotes education as a force to unite people, nationals and cultures, where she served as chairwoman for over a decade. Liza is well known as the Founder and former executive director of GERMIN, an NGO that uses technology and virtual channels to connect and engage with the diaspora community to advance the socio-economic development and democratisation of the Western Balkan region. Additionally, Liza is also the Co-Founder and former managing director of KosovoDiaspora.org, a crowdsourcing digital engagement and diplomacy platform that connects Kosovars to the world and vice versa to promote Kosovo’s statehood internationally.

Soulaima is a speaker, consultant, author, blogger and an active board member in several public and private companies. It is her vision to change the world to a better more tolerant place through trade and business, and relations between countries and people. She spends part of her time and own money travelling around the world to do “impact journeys”. The past year she has been to Mexico, UAE, India, Jordan, Myanmar and China to work with local entrepreneurs, young global leaders, local schools, change makers and NGOs. Since 2007, she has worked as an advisor and speaker for more than 1000 clients. She has received several prestigious awards among others the Rising Star, the Talent 100 price 2004, PowerWomen, 20 Greatest Nordic Thinkers. Soulaima holds an E-MBA from the Copenhagen Business School.

Marek Hattas is the Mayor of his hometown of Nitra. He sat in Slovakia’s Parliament from 2020 to 2023. Hattas’ victory in Nitra’s 2018 municipal election was a major upset. With little political experience and a largely self-funded campaign, the youthful activist defeated a longstanding incumbent from the nationalist Direction (Smer) party. Hattas built a groundswell of support in the city of 78,000 inhabitants: he organised anti-racism marches as a teenager; founded the popular Hidepark cultural space; and – as a keen cyclist – was a high-profile campaigner for green mobility. After a first term committed to community development, Hattas was re-elected in 2022.

Jávor is a Hungarian environmentalist, who currently heads the Representation of Budapest to the EU. He is former member of the European Parliament, during which time he focused on the policy areas of climate and environment, energy, anti-corruption and Roma inclusion. As an MEP, he was a founding member of the Dialogue for Hungary party and served as the first vice-chair of the Committee for Environment, Public Health and Food Safety. As a former member of parliament in the Hungarian National Assembly, Jávor served as leader of the Hungarian opposition party, Politics Can Be Different, and chair of the Sustainable Development Committee for most of his mandate. Prior to his career in politics, Jávor was a professor and lecturer in environmental law and has authored several articles and publications on sustainable development. He is also a founding member of Védegylet (Protect the Future), an NGO which aims to raise awareness of global environmental threats.

Lubomila Jordanova currently serves as the CEO of Diginex, following its acquisition of Plan A, the climate-tech company she co-founded. Plan A provides software that helps businesses decarbonise and align with sustainability policies, working with over a thousand organisations, including major global companies and public institutions. Jordanova is also co-founder of the Greentech Alliance, a community of more than 3,500 businesses tackling climate change with technology, connected to over 500 advisors from venture capital, media and business. She previously worked in investment banking, venture capital and fintech across Asia and Europe. Jordanova has been recognised as a LinkedIn Top Voice, Marshall Fund Fellow and Top 50 Women Entrepreneurs in Germany.

Ivan Lesay is a political economist, advisor and writer from Slovakia, currently serving as Foresight Advisor at the National Bank of Slovakia. He previously initiated the creation of the Slovak Investment Holding, a state-owned fund supporting strategic sectors, and as CEO managed over €1bn in investments to strengthen the national economy. Lesay has held senior government roles, including deputy finance minister, and played a leading role in negotiating the EU’s 2017 Budget during Slovakia’s EU Presidency. He also served on the Board of the European Investment Bank. A keen writer, Lesay has published works ranging from economic analysis to children’s literature, and his debut novel, The Topography of Pain, was published in English by Guernica Editions in 2024.

Evelien Masschelein started her career as a researcher on innovation in the University of Leuven, then worked as a strategic policy advisor for the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of employment. She worked 13 years first as a lead expert and then as country director in Ecuador, Palestine and Morocco. She is a frequent panelist on issues related to international cooperation and partnership development.

Meghan Milloy is the Co-Founder of Republican Women for Progress (RWFP) and the Director of Strategic Communications at the Institute for International Bankers. Prior to this, she was a fellow at the Robert Bosch Foundation, where her work focused on trade issues in the German public and private sectors. Meghan previously served as the chair of Republican Women for Hillary (RWFH) and director of financial services policy at the American Action Forum (AAF). During the Obama administration, Meghan worked as a presidential management fellow at the Small Business Administration on matters of financial inclusion and as a counsel with the House Financial Services Committee. She was an intern at the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the George W. Bush White House. Meghan has also worked in the office of former Senate majority leader Trent Lott and has volunteered for the campaigns of Haley Barbour, George W. Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton.

Bora Muzhaqi is an Albanian politician and Member of Parliament, currently serving as Vice-Chair of the Parliamentary Commission for Europe and Foreign Affairs. She previously served as Albania’s Minister of State for Youth and Children, where she led the country’s first National Youth Strategy focused on expanding opportunities for young people, strengthening youth employment and increasing youth participation in decision-making. Bora began her career in the private sector before joining the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, where she worked with public authorities to improve the business environment and support startup development. She later joined the Socialist Party of Albania and has since focused on policies advancing youth inclusion, governance reform and international cooperation.

A Polish economist, Katarzyna is currently a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences Committee for Future Studies Poland 2000 Plus. Her research interests include development, cultural and international economics, with a focus on East Asian markets. Katarzyna’s work also explores challenges to global development. Having lectured at universities across Asia, Africa and Europe, she has worked on several research projects for the European Commission and the National Bureau of Research in Poland, among other international institutions, as well as national and local governments. Her academic achievements have been recognised by numerous awards, including one for outstanding young scholars from Poland’s Minister of Science and Higher Education. Katarzyna has published numerous articles and books on issues relating to development, governance, integration and regional cooperation, most recently having co-edited “The Rise of Megacities: Challenges, Opportunities and Unique Characteristics”.

Building on an extensive background in architecture and history, Stephan Petermann has established himself as a prominent figure in Europe’s arts & culture scene. He has written for the architecture magazine VOLUME and was previously a member of the EU Reflection Group, a ‘wise men’ council established to stimulate thinking around the future of the European Union. Petermann’s most recent artistic endeavour saw him participate in a collaborative project between the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Chinese Academy for Fine Arts.

An Estonian designer and innovator, Marko is passionate about the open sharing of knowledge and its capabilities to shape the future. Having most recently founded Grantful, he helped launched a global online hackathon series, Hack the Crisis and The Global Hack, to address challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic. Marko delivered a TED talk on how the initiative could create solutions for the post-pandemic world. He is the Co-Founder and former CEO of Guaana, an online platform that connects scientists and researchers to break down barriers between disciplines. Marko is a Member of Accelerate Estonia’s Advisory Board, the Estonian Founders Society and the Estonian Ministry of Social Affairs’ mental health think tank. He has worked closely with research organisations and government institutions, including CERN, the European Space Agency, Dubai Future Foundation and the European Commission, to empower researchers and innovators. Marko previously worked as a creative and art director at branding and service design companies.

Heïdi Sevestre is a French glaciologist, specialising in glacier dynamics, tropical glaciers and ice shelves in Antarctica. She aims to make scientific knowledge more accessible and motivate concrete, effective climate action. Sevestre is the Deputy Secretary of AMAP, an Arctic Council working group that coordinates research on climate, pollutants, contaminants, and human and ecosystem health in the Arctic. Her research on glacier surges, which was featured in Science magazine, strengthened our understanding of climate change’s impact on glaciers. Sevestre regularly leads scientific expeditions to polar and high mountain regions and was notably awarded the inaugural Shackleton Medal for the Protection of Polar Regions.

Michał Szczerba currently serves as member of the European Parliament, Vice-Chair of the Delegation to the EU-Armenia Parliamentary Partnership Committee, the EU-Azerbaijan Parliamentary Cooperation Committee and the EU-Georgia Parliamentary Association Committee.  He also holds the position of President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. An experienced Polish politician, Szczerba served as an elected member of the Polish Sejm for several legislatures since 2007. Prior to this, he worked as an expert on EU funding for restructuring and modernising agriculture and was on the Wola District Council of Warsaw. Szczerba notably received the Order of Honour from the President of the Republic of Georgia, and has been part of numerous leadership training programmes.

Kirsten van den Hul was the director of DutchCulture, the Dutch network and knowledge organisation for international cultural cooperation. Before assuming her current position, she worked as an independent consultant through her own company, The Change Agent, on different transition projects, mainly in the public sector. Previously, van den Hul served as member of parliament for the Dutch Labour Party, where she focused on culture, education, gender equality, foreign trade and development. An Eastern Europe specialist, she was also active on the crossroads between culture, human rights and international cooperation and worked for several international NGOs, including international women’s fund Mama Cash and the European Cultural Foundation.  Van den Hul was also a columnist for newspapers and magazines, contributed to a number of publications and wrote a book, “(S)hevolution”. In addition, she notably held the role of Dutch UN Women’s Representative.

Wietse is an award-winning Dutch social entrepreneur and conservationist, pioneering regenerative blue economy ventures. Wietse has received wide recognition for his innovative approach to mobilising businesses, governments and citizens to form uncommon partnerships for the social, economic and ecological regeneration of European coastal and ocean areas. His current venture, the Sea Ranger Service, trains unemployed young people from port cities with the help of navy veterans to manage Marine Protected Areas in European seas. A new type of professional sailing vessel has been developed for the Sea Rangers, with cost-effective sea operation and zero emissions.