President
Sandro Gozi was the Secretary of State for European Affairs in the Renzi and Gentiloni Governments (2014-2018) and Member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies (2006-2018). Prior to that, he was a diplomat and then spent more than a decade in the European institutions notably as a European Commission official (1996-2000) and then as member of the Cabinet of European Commission President Romano Prodi (2000-2004) and advisor to European Commission President Jose Barroso.
Vice - President
Domènec Ruiz Devesa, from the UEF Spain section lawyer, economist and political scientist.
Former senior advisor at the Ministry for the Presidency, a parliamentary assistant at the European Parliament, and the deputy chief of cabinet of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, he is very active in European federalism since 2013, co-founding UEF Madrid and UEF Spain. After the UEF Congress in Vienna, he has been engaged as an active member of the FC of UEF Europe. Currently, a Member of the European Parliament in May 2019 and S&D spokesperson in the Committee of Constitutional Affairs. In the European Parliament, works closely with the Spinelli Group in order to make progress in the federalist roadmap.
Vice - President
Luisa Trumellini, graduated in philosophy, started to be active in JEF and UEF since mid ‘80s. At present, she is member of the MFE national board and secretary of MFE-Pavia (since 1986), where she is in charge of the implementation in town of the federalist political campaigns. She is very committed in recruitment and training activities, being also responsible for the regional training seminar in Lombardia on “Federalism and European unity” (since 1995). Deputy Director of the Spinelli Institute from 1988 to 2001, she was in charge of the organization of the Ventotene International Seminar. She is editor of a small federalist journal in Lombardia and of the European Letter, and she is assistant to the editor of The Federalist. (Italian, born in 1959).
Vice - President
Markus Ferber has been a Member of the European Parliament since 1994. During his time in office, he has served in multiple high-profile roles, such as Chairman, CSU delegation in the European Parliament and Co-Chairman, CDU/CSU delegation in the EPP Group. Currently, he serves as the Coordinator of the European People's Party (EPP) in the European Parliament's Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (ECON). Additionally, he has been appointed to the Transport and Tourism committee (TRAN) and was elected as 1st Vice-Chair to the Subcommittee on Tax Matters (FISC). Markus Ferber takes a keen interest in financial services, as well as banking and insurance legislation. Since the year 2000 he chairs the Europa Union Bavaria. On 1 January 2020, Ferber became Chairman of the Hanns Seidel Foundation, a political foundation associated with the CSU.
Secretary-General
Anna Echterhoff is a lawyer working in the public sector and Saarland, Germany. She has studied law at the University of Muenster and at the Università degli Studi Roma Tre (Erasmus grant), as well as canon law at the University of Muenster and at the Potificia Università Gregoriana in Rome. In 2009 she joined Europa-Union Deutschland and become an active member of its Brussels organisation. From 2011 to 2015, she was elected member of the Executive Committee of the EUD Brussels organisation and served from 2013 to 2015 as Vice-president.
Treasurer
Roland Hühn. After my studies, I worked as a lawyer in the road construction sector at the Hessian Ministry of Economics and Technology from 1983 to 1985. In 1985 I was elected mayor of the town of Heringen/Werra. I held this office until 1992, when I moved to the district of Hersfeld Rotenburg, where I held another elective office as 1st District Councillor or Deputy District Administrator. In 1997 I won the first direct election of a district administrator in the district of Hersfeld-Rotenburg and held this elective office for 6 years. In 2003 I was admitted to the bar and worked for the Herhof company in Solms. In 2007, the then Gesellschaft für technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) recruited me for a project in Saudi Arabia to develop a strategy for improving the local government system in the Kingdom. After the successful completion of this project, I worked as a municipal advisor in the Saudi Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs (MOMRA). In 2009, I was asked by GTZ to take on the position of Country Director for GTZ (now GIZ) in Saudi Arabia. I held this position with about 150 staff in the country until 2012. Since May 2014, I have been working again as an advisor for the Saudi Ministry of Municipalities in the implementation of the strategy I wrote at that time to improve the municipal system, with sporadic visits to the country.
Bureau Members
Raphaël Bez is Secretary General of UEF/EMI Switzerland since September 2018 after having served as Deputy Secretary General from November 2017 to August 2018. He currently represents JEF Switzerland on the Board of the Swiss National Youth Council. Previously, he worked for various organisations in the social field and the promotion of youth as well as for the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs in Berne and in Vienna (Austria) at the Permanent Mission of Switzerland to the OSCE. He has been involved for more than fifteen years in youth organisations such as the Scout movement and JEF Switzerland. He holds a Bachelor Degree in Political Science (University of Lausanne) and a Master Degree in European Studies (University of Fribourg).
Daniel Gerer has been active with the European Federalists for over 2 decades covering different positions: he has been President of JEF Austria for 10 years, and then Secretary General. During this period he organised numerous trainings, debates, seminars, campaigns and other events. He is well experienced in European Democracy projects and campaigning. Currently, he sees opportunities for UEF to use CoFoE and to advance Federalists' political goals for a united Europe.
Daphne Gogou is a Greek lawyer, specialised in European Law and in Private International Law. She joined the European Commission in 1992 and since then has been working in different policy areas such as telecommunications, internal market, environment, justice and home affairs. She has vast experience on the functioning of the European Institutions, and she is a specialist on migration, security, people mobility and Human Rights matters. From 2014 to 2017, she has been the president of European Demos, a Greek federalist NGO and over the past 3 years she has been chairing the UEF Political Commission 4.
François Mennerat. Initially practiced as a clinician, obtained a Master and a PhD in health systems management and health informatics, and was appointed as medical adviser with public and private health insurance bodies, as well, for a time, as an officer at the French Ministry of health, and associate lecturer at the University of Saint-Étienne. Actively involved in several European R&D projects in the field of Health Informatics (successive Framework Programmes), and in standard development activities within CEN (European Standardisation Committee), the last 20 years of his professional career made him extensively travelling Europe-wide (and beyond), being in regular contact with numbers of field actors and many European Commission officers. Leading or chairing several working groups or bodies, he facilitated consensus emergence between actors with diverse practice and culture, notably administrative. (French, born in 1944).
Eszter Nagy is an economist, a former diplomat and a devoted European. She has been active in the Hungarian section of the European Federalists since 2016, and since the UEF Congress in Vienna has been a Federal Committee member on behalf of her section. In February 2019, she was the main organizer of a political debate during the campaign period for European elections and the "We are Europe Citizens’ Agora" in Budapest. In January 2021, she coordinated and organized the Hungarian participation in the form of 2 online panel discussions in the framework of the UEF project, "Democracy is Europe". Besides Hungarian, she speaks English, French, German, and Spanish. She would like to contribute to the real unification of European societies and further development of the European integration into a more federalist direction.
Giulia Rossolillo is a Member of Movimento Federalista Europeo since 1985. She is editor of the Political Journal “Il Federalista/The Federalist” founded in 1959 by Mario Albertini and based on the principles of federalism and on the rejection of nationalism. Since 2011 Giulia Rossolillo is a full professor of European Union law at the University of Pavia, where she has organised several seminars and meetings on the political unification of Europe and on the reforms necessary for the EU to become a federation. She extensively published on these topics both in EU journals and in the Federalist.
Laura Tatarėlytė has been the Executive Director of European Movement Lithuania from March 2020. Laura brings in experience in conducting fundraising and partnership building activities, project management, campaigning and communication. Since the UEF Congress in Vienna in 2018 she has been a Federal Committee member on behalf of the Lithuanian UEF section. As a former Secretary General of European Federalists in Lithuania, Laura contributed to organizing various pro-European events and initiatives in Lithuania. Laura holds a Master’s degree in Law from Vilnius University, also a Master of Laws (LL.M.) from Free University of Berlin.
Wolfgang Wettach is Vice-Chairperson of Europa-Union Baden-Württemberg in Southwest of Germany, with over 3000 members it is one of the strongest UEF sections, he is also the Rapporteur of the UEF Political Commission 3 on Foreign and Security Policy. He is a founding member of the German Green Party and of the first Green Youth (Grüne Jugend). In his work life, he is a Business consultant for tech Start-Up companies in the south of Germany since 1998.
Birgit Wille has a degree in business administration and studied political science, sociology and philosophy. After working for the German branch of a French industrial group in Aachen, she switched to social work in Aachen, working as the managing director of a charity organisation for a few years. In 2001, the state parliament of Schleswig-Holstein elected her as the state's ombudswoman. She held this office for 13 years. During this time, she was also active at European level and was a member of the board of the European Ombudsman Institute. Now she works as a consultant. She has been a member of the Europa Union for a number of years and is a district chairwoman in Lübeck and deputy state chairwoman in Schleswig-Holstein as well as a member of the Federal Executive Committee of Europa Union Deutschland (EUD).
Honorary Presidents
Jo LEINEN is a Member of the European Parliament representing Germany. He was elected on the SPD ticket and acts as a representative within the Party of European Socialists group. He obtained a Law Degree in 1972 and a Certificate of Advanced European Studies from the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium, in 1974. Furthermore, he has been a President of the UEF from 1996 to 2006.
Honorary Members
Friedhelm FRISCHENSCHLAGER is an Austrian politician, originally a member of the Freedom Party of Austria before co-founding the Liberal Forum in 1993. Frischenshlager has served in the European Parliament (1996-1999), as a Director of the department of democratization of the OSCE Mission in Kosovo (2001-2003), and he has been a Secretary-General of the UEF from 2005 to 2007.
Alfonso IOZZO has graduated in economics from the University of Turin and started his career at the Istituto Bancario San Paolo di Torino, where from 1961 to 1995 he held in succession the position had of research and planning department; General Manager, International Division; and Deputy Chief General Manager. From 1995 to 2001 he was Secretary General of Compagnia di San Paolo, Turin, from 2001 to 2006 Managing Director of San Paolo Imi, and from 2006 to 2008 President of Cassa Depositi e Prestiti in Rome. In addition he occuped numerous non-executive position in financial institutions (Associazione Bancaria Italiana, Hambros Bank LTD London, Banque Indosuez Paris, Banco del Desarrollo Santiago, Ruegg Bank AG Zurig, Inter-europa Bank Budapest, Institut of International Finance Washington DC). He was also a member of the Movimento Federealista Europeo since 1963, served as ITC president from 1995 to 2005, and he has been a member of the Executive Board of the Union of the European Federalists since 1998.
Guido MONTANI is a full time professor of International Political Economy at the University of Pavia (I). In 1970 he was elected President of the Jeunes du MFE, the supranational organisation of the federalists during the sixties, until 1972, when in the Luxembourg’s Congress the present JEF was founded. As the responsible for the youth policy in the MFE-Italy, he founded the first federalist seminar in Ventotene in 1982 and after Spinelli’s death, the Altiero Spinelli Institute for Federalist Studies in 1987. In 1993 he was elected Secretary-General of the MFE and from 2005 to 2009 he was President of the MFE. From 2008 to 2013 he has been a Vice-President of the UEF.
Sergio PISTONE is a professor of European integration at the Faculty of Political Science at the univeristy of Torino, also holder of the chair "Jean Monnet". He is member of the scientific committee publishing the series "History of Federalism and European Integration" ("Storia del Federalismo e dell' integrazione europea").
