Claudia De Martino

Claudia is one of the candidates standing for elections as member representatives of the Transeuropa Network. Find out more about who she is and why she stands as a candidate. Elections will take place from October 7th to 14th: sign up to vote!

Born in Rome in September 1981, I studied History and Politics at the University of Roma Tre and at Nijmegen Katholieke Universiteit in the Netherlands. I graduated my M.A. in 2006 and I worked in Brussels at the Centre of European Policy Studies in the area of EU Justice&Home Affairs in 2007, although I specialized in Middle Eastern affairs. In 2008 I set off for a semester in Israel, to pick up some Hebrew and Arabic at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and in 2009 I started my PhD in Social History of Israel at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. In the meantime, I started teaching History of the Mediterranean at Roma Tre University and worked part-time for Unimed, an association of Universities of the Mediterranean which promotes students’ and researchers’ exchanges and thematic workshops throughout the MEDA countries and the Southern European ones. I have always been a pro-European activist and I have been a member of JEF (Young European Federalists) since 2003, and got elected in the organization’s International Board in 2007. I speak French, English, Hebrew, little bit of German and a bit of Arabic, and I consider myself a 100% committed European citizen, but devoted to change the EU as it is right now.  

In the last year, I came to know EA as the only opportunity accessible for people to make politics at European level in a non-partisan way. I have already realized many years ago that most of the problems affecting my country, besides the endemic corruption of its ruling class, could not be addressed anymore on a national scale and were regarding us all as European citizens. When I am thinking of those common problems, it came up first to my mind the youth unemployment, which reached a threatening level in Spain but it is not less consistent in Italy, Greece, Romania and other countries. The same goes for the challenges posed to the right of freedom of expression, where Hungary stands out as the worst practice, and with the issue of welcoming or rejecting refugees fleeing their country, and specifically, since February last year, the Arab countries just on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea.

I also share the frustration and the disappointment people my age and younger feel about not being considered in politics, not being consulted on decisions affecting their lives (think of retirement wages and so on) and forced, in many cases, to choose, in nineteenth century-way, between work and family. I share their anger of being unemployed and, thus, feel even less empowered to take a stance and stand out for the rights, because they are accused of not contributing to society but posing a problem. So, when i decided to run, quite in a rush, for this EA election campaigns, i figured out that i might not display a full-fledged, already-made program, but just set the cat among the pigeons, in order to see if i could contribute to change, even slightly, this country (Europe) i so much love, but that lately seems to tell the younger generations that there is only one single path to tackle the economic crisis: bow down to the banks, accept economic diktat to pay back debts and get rid of any expectation of improving their conditions in the near future.

However, I don't think this is reasonable and I stay with Iceland when its people stand up and claim they don't want to pay for a crisis they had not been consulted on nor they contributed to. I still consider making citizens' voice heard a major tool of democracy and democracy something we should not get rid of even in those difficult times of crisis. Thus, I am trying to make my part by supporting EA – the best idea of reaction and reflection on Europe i ever bumped in lately and in years- and standing as a representative for it.