Mogens Blicher Bjerregård

Chair

Freelance consultant and international advisor on capacity building, press freedom and authors' rights. Former President of the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ). Member of the Council of The International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC) of the UNESCO since 2014. Was a founding member of the International Media Support (IMS). He has been President of the Danish Union of Journalists (DJ) from 1999 - 2015. Blicher Bjerregård successfully led the DJ to a strong union with yearly growth in its membership.

Rebecca Harms

Vice Chair

Rebecca Harms is a former Member of the European Parliament. As one of the leading figures in the German anti-nuclear movement since the mid-1970s, she joined the Green Party in 1994 and served as a Member of Parliament in Lower Saxony. She moved to Brussels in 2004 when Central European States joined the European Union. She was President of the Green Group and also President of the Parliamentary Assembly with the Eastern Partnership countries (Euronest). She became well known for trying to bridge the gap between East and West Europe. While supporting democratisation and rule of law in Eastern Europe and especially in Ukraine and Turkey she was confronted with the barriers to change caused by the lack of independent news media and/ or press freedom. The Russian war on information and the question of how to react, the criminalisation and mass detention of journalists and writers in the purge in Turkey and also the violence against journalists - and even assassinations - in EU member states became her priorities in her work in the European Parliament. Today she lives in a village in Lower Saxony with her former colleagues of the Wendland Film Co-operative. She is a member of the Assembly of the HeinrichBöll Foundation and represents the BöllFoundation at ENOP, the European Network of Political Foundations. She has joined the Sustainability Council of the Volkswagen car manufacturer and continues to support and advising CSOs in Germany and the Eastern Partnership countries.

Galina Arapova

Galina Arapova is director and senior media lawyer of the NGO Mass Media Defence Centre, working in the field of media rights protection and the promotion of freedom of expression standards in Russia. She has a law degree, and undertook post graduate studies at the Institute of the World Economy and International Relations (Russian Academy of Sciences). She is a graduate of the European Law Institute (Birmingham, UK) in human rights law where she completed a practice programme conducted in cooperation with the Council of Europe. She has worked in the field of freedom of expression and freedom of information since 1995.

Tamara Filipović Stevanović

Tamara Filipović Stevanović (Serbia) has been with the Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia (IJAS) since 2010, serving as Secretary General since 2020. She leads projects on journalists’ safety, labor rights, media policy, and press freedom, and has contributed to Serbia’s national Media Strategy and Action Plan. Tamara coordinates the regional SafeJournalists Network, previously chaired the EFJ Labor Rights Expert Group, and is currently a board member of the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF). She is a committed media activist and advocate for stronger protections of journalists across the Western Balkans.

Stephan Seeger

Since 2001, Stephan Seeger has been Director of Foundations at Sparkasse Leipzig, which acted as project developer for the ECMPF (2010 to 2015) and as the organising body for the ECPMF (2015–2017). He also serves on the board of the European Institute for Journalism and Communication Research (EIJC). From 1998 to 2001 he was an advisor to the board of Sparkasse Leipzig. In this role, he was responsible, among other things, for political consulting and public affairs. Before joining Sparkasse, he served as a press officer for the Regional Council President of Leipzig from 1993 to 1998.

Lucie Sykorova

Chair

Journalist since 2001, worked for print and online media in the region of Pilsen (CZ), 2015-2020 for magazine Veřejná správa, from 2021 for investigative website HlidaciPes.org. Co-founder and member of board of the Association of Regional Journalists. Co-founder and chair of the Jindřich Opper´s Journalists Club, which runs the regional startup magazine Apel-plzen.cz and organized a program for relocation of journalists in need from Eastern Europe. Vicechair of the Association of Online Publishers (AOV), which brings together private independent media in Czech republic. On behalf of AOV she´s a board member of News Media Europe (NME), which represents more than 2,500 media outlets in 14 European countries. Member of IPI.

Gian-Paolo Accardo

Gian-Paolo Accardo is an Italian-Dutch journalist born in Brussels in 1969. He is the editor-in-chief of Voxeurop and the co-founder of Voxeurop European Cooperative Society. He is also responsible for the Italian version of Voxeurop and has been deputy editor of Presseurop. A former deputy ed-in-chief at Courrier international and current correspondent for Internazionale, he has worked for the Italian news agency TMNews and several other French and Italian media.

Martin Fiedler

Born in Leipzig in 1982, Martin Fiedler studied history and English at Leipzig University and graduated with a master’s degree. Since 2011, he is working for the Foundations of Sparkasse Leipzig. Initially responsible for project management, he is now also in charge for all public relations and the office of European Institute for Journalism and Communication research.

Salla Nazarenko

Dr Salla Nazarenko works at the Union of Journalists in Finland as the international affairs' specialist, in charge for international affairs, media policy and ethics. She holds a PhD in journalism from Tampere University in Finland. She is also a Journalism Fellow from the Reuters Institute for the study of journalism at the University of Oxford, UK, and a Rotary Peace Fellow from Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand.

She is a member of multiple national and international expert groups in the field of media freedom and transparency, and a renowned expert in the fields of media ethics, anti-corruption, disinformation and media development. She is also author of several books, both fiction and non-fiction.

Oliver Vujovic

Oliver Vujovic is a founder of the South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO) and since 2000 has been SEEMO Secretary General. Vujovic worked as a journalist and Ex-Yugoslavia correspondent for the Austrian daily Die Presse between 1991 and 2000, and as a freelancer for different media in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and the UK. He also worked in the marketing department of the German company Henkel. He graduated in economics and is currently working on a PhD at the University of Vienna. Vujovic started his professional work as a journalist for Radio Indeks 202 (Radio Belgrade) in Belgrade (1988) and worked from the founding for Radio B92 in Belgrade (1989). In 2000 and 2001, he served as Director of the Vienna Balkan publication Südosteuropäischer Dialog, and Director and Advisor of the Kulturzentrum in Vienna.

Vujovic is also a founder and Deputy Director of the South-East and Central Europe PR Organisation (SECEPRO) in Vienna and of the International Institute - International Media Center in Vienna. He is also co-founder and Deputy Director of the International Academy in Belgrade. He is author, co-editor, editor, and publisher of numerous books, magazines, publications, research articles, and research papers.