Forum Talk 1 – Elections under pressure: what’s at stake for Representative Democracy?
7 November 2024 - 11.15-13.00 / Palais de l'Europe / Room 11
Interpretation FR/EN
In Co-operation with the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE)
Recent elections have seen increased instrumentalisation, polarisation and disinformation, raising questions about the fairness and integrity of the electoral processes and their impact on representative democracy.
Moderator:
Mr George Papandreou served as Prime Minister of Greece from 2009 to 2011, as well as Minister of Foreign Affairs (1999-2004) and Minister of Education (1994-1996). Throughout his political career, he has actively sought to maximize citizen participation in governance through information technologies, advocated for “Green diplomacy” and promoted peace building and European integration in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans. He currently represents the Movement for Change party in the Hellenic Parliament. Since 2019, he is a member of the Greek delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) and affiliated to the Socialists, Democrats and Greens Group. As a member of PACE, he has been the Chairperson of the Sub-Committee on Democracy and is now the General Rapporteur on Democracy as well as the Rapporteur for follow-up on the resolution “Strengthening democracy through participatory and deliberative processes”.
Panel:
Ms Iris Boyer is an expert on the topics of polarisation, technological progress and its intersection with human rights and civil liberties. Since 2023, she is the head of The International Observatory on Information and Democracy, a science to policy interface on the impact of the digital information space on democracy, hosted by the Forum on Information & Democracy. She is also a senior advisor at the think tank Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) and an honorary member of different expert groups on information manipulations and online threats set up by the French regulatory body and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Just recently she set up the first coalition of academics observing cyberthreats to electoral integrity in France. Previously, she has worked as a Senior Policy Consultant for Reset and a Senior Policy Manager for the Web Foundation and before that at Facebook and Google on European and Global programming, among others.
Tomislav Damnjanovic has been a trainer, consultant, and campaign manager for various political parties across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia for 25 years. For the past 20 years, he has worked as a trainer and lecturer for numerous international organizations, including NDI, IRI, US Aid, IREX, the Robert Schuman Institute, the Jarl Hjalmarson Foundation, KAS, KIC, PYPA, WFD, and Safer World. His courses primarily focus on research for political parties and their campaigns (both quantitative and qualitative), party organization, door-to-door campaign strategies, volunteer management, and the use of the internet and social media in political campaigning.
Mr Pierre-Alain Fridez is a doctor and Swiss politician. Since 2016, he is a member of the Swiss delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) and affiliated to the Socialists, Democrats and Greens group. In January 2024 he was nominated Vice-President of the Assembly. He has participated in more than 20 election observation missions with PACE, most recently to the Republic of Moldova - on which he is a co-rapporteur at the Monitoring Committee - and Georgia, as well as post-electoral activities and electoral cooperations. Mr Fridez was the chairperson of the Committee on Migration, Refugees and Displaced Persons in 2020 and 2021, and authored a report on “The theme of migration and asylum in election campaigns and the consequences on the reception of migrants and their rights”. On a similar topic, he chaired a session on “Elections in times of crisis” at the Bern Conference in May 2023.
Zanda KALNIŅA-LUKAŠEVICA, PACE, Latvia TBC
Alternative: A Member of the Mexican delegation to PACE TBC
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