WHO EUMANS ARE

Marco Cappato is the founder and co-president of Eumans, a pan-European popular initiative movement, Treasurer of Associazione Luca Coscioni and Co-founder of Science for democracy and the World Congress for Freedom of Scientific Research, Promoter of the Legal Euthanasia campaign.

He has carried out civil disobedience actions - on drugs, sexual freedom and freedom of expression, scientific research and the end of life - which have led him to face trials, detentions and arrests, obtaining among other things the decriminalization of suicide aid in Italy.

Lorenzo Mineo (administrator)

Lorenzo Mineo graduated from Orientale University in Naples in political science and specialized in urban policy at SciencesPo (Paris). He coordinates the activities of the pan-European movement Eumans in Italy with a particular focus on political and democratic rights. He is the coordinator of the initiative "Cittadin3 per il Clima" and the coalition Politici Per Caso to promote at all levels the institutionalisation of sortition-based citizens assemblies.In the summer of 2021 he launched a hunger strike that led to the final adoption of the Digital Signature for referendum and bills of popular initiatives. The nonviolent action was the last step of a campaign promoted by EUMANS in support of Democrazia Radicale and Mario Staderini's long fight to simplify the access for citizens to instruments of participatory democracy in Italy. Lorenzo Mineo is also the Administrator of EUMANS.

Avy Candeli

Born in Genoa in 1978, he graduated from the Academy of Communication in Milan in 2000 and worked for 15 years as a copywriter in advertising agencies creating press, radio and TV campaigns, both national and international.
In 2015 he became creative director of Havas Pr Milan, where he takes care of strategy and creativity for profit and non-profit projects.
A supporter of the Luca Coscioni Association since its foundation, he started in 2012 to follow the communication supporting some of its most important initiatives, such as the "Liberi Fino Alla Fine" campaign created for the popular initiative bill.
In 2013, the video 'Vivere', made with Studio12 and the music of Vasco Rossi in support of the eutanasialegale.it bill, won an Award from the Italian Art Directors Club.
In 2014, the appeal of the video 'Il Parlamento si faccia vivo' was joined by over 70 sick people, doctors, nurses, citizens and personalities from the world of science, culture and entertainment.
In 2015 he helps the association 'AFDMD, Derecho a Morir Dignamente' to adapt the video in Spain with the motto 'Libres Hasta El Final'. Parliament passes a good law on medical aid to voluntary death in 2021.
After the virality of the video "Legalization illustrated to adults" made for the radical committee Cambiamo Noi in 2013, in 2016 with the artist Giovanni di Modica he curates the creativity in support of the bill "Legalizziamo".
In 2017 he curated with videomaker Anton Lucarelli Fabiano Antoniani's video appeal to the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella, and together they accompanied Marco Cappato to Switzerland to narrate his civil disobedience.
The 'Fabo Libero' communication campaign received a special mention at that year's 'Grand Prix Relational Strategies'.
Also in 2017, he returned to Switzerland with Anton Lucarelli to tell the story of Mina Welby's civil disobedience with Davide Trentini, and they helped Andrea Curiazi tell "The battle of Irene", his wife, in a video appeal to Parliament launched in the aftermath of the Senate's approval of the biotesting law.
At the end of 2019 he decided to leave the agency and devote himself mainly to supervising the communication and creativity of campaigns promoted or supported by the Association.
In 2020 with Nobel Prize winners, scientists, politicians and activists he realised in Ethiopia the video appeal to the United Nations "Enjoy Science" for the right to enjoy the benefits of science and its progress, and supervised the main communication projects in support of StopGlobalWarming.Eu, the European Citizens' Initiative coordinated by Eumans! for a tax on CO2 emissions by reducing taxes on labour.

Ophelie Masson

Ophélie is a civic engagement activist who concentrates her energy on being the “bridge” between European CSOs and the European Union institutions. She believes in participative and direct democracy, hence her focus on developing citizens assemblies across Europe as a form of empowering civic engagement. She works as Programme Coordinator for European Alternatives and for the coalition of Citizens Takeover Europe, where she followed closely the developments of the Conference on the Future of Europe. Ophélie is a committed feminist, who believes in an intersectional approach to ending all forms of gender-based violence, she also volunteers with local organisations defending LGBT+ rights. She is based in Brussels and Paris.

Octavian Lazea
Born Romanian but raised Italian, Octavian is a young European currently living his EU experience in Brussels, between public affairs in the healthcare sector and transnational activism for democracy.
Passionate about geopolitics and EU public affairs, Octavian holds a Master’s degree in International Relations and public policy from the Free University of Brussels, with a final dissertation on the role of local institutional actors in the European Citizens Initiative StopGlobalWarming.eu led by Eumans. Intrigued by rising China, Octavian also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Interpreting and Translation from the University of International Studies of Rome, with a final dissertation on the Sino-French relations in the new millenium and a deep-dive into the environmental question. Moreover, Octavian is curious about digital policy and the potential of digital technologies, from AI to blockchain. 
Octavian is currently building his career in Public Affairs at Evoke Incisive Health, an award-winning healthcare policy and communications consultancy, where he focuses on pharmaceuticals, medical devices, digital health, oncology and rare diseases. Before his agency life, Octavian worked at Science for Democracy and Eumans, where he was involved in transnational campaigns advocating for democracy, human rights, sustainability and evidence-based policymaking.
Octavian is fluent in Italian, Romanian, English and French, and has basic skills in Chinese.

Paul Blokker
Paul Blokker is a European citizen, and has been working at universities in the Netherlands, the UK, the Czech Republic. He is currently working as a political sociologist at the University of Bologna, Italy. His research focusses on democratic participation, the deepening of democracy, political engagement and dissidence, political and legal mobilization, social imaginaries, constitutionalism and human rights. He believes democracy needs to be re-imagined in a way that takes the individual and collective autonomy of human beings seriously. He is an active member of the transnational civil society coalition Citizens Take over Europe (CTOE).

Mrs Valerja Korosec, Ph.D., has been employed at the Institute of Macroeconomic Analysis and Development (IMAD) of the Slovenian Government since 2001. She is engaged in analyzing the European social policy and data on poverty, inequality, material deprivation, social exclusion and gender equality, as well as Sustainable Development Goals and different synthetic development indicators, such as the Human Development Index, Social Progress Index, Prosperity index, etc.

Besides working for IMAD, she is an independent researcher of a new, zaUTD social policy approach, which integrates the unconditional uniform universal system with the ‘Trade’ and ‘Democratic’ system and so upgrades the concept of social market system. Upon this conceptual approach she has built some political pragmatic proposals. In 2010 she published an algorithm for a budget neutral introduction of basic income in Slovenia and started to develop the idea of universal job guarantee coupled with the idea of shorter working week. She is regularly invited to present her work at different meetings and workshops in Slovenia or to international organizations. She presented this three-dimensional system at the conference “Slovenia 2030” – Change for an efficient social state, organised by Borut Pahor, President of the RS, in 2015 (“Slovenia 2030” – Change for efficient social state organized by the president of RS, Borut Pahor in 2015).  She presented the MEFISTO, EUROMOD microsimulation of this approach in the field of child benefits, at the Universal Child Grant conference in Geneva organised by UNICEF and ILO in 2019.

Mrs Valerija KOROŠEC holds a PhD in Postmodern Sociology from the University of Maribor, MSc in European Social Policy (MESPA program organized by the EU and the University of Ljubljana) and a degree in Moral Education, Faculty of Education, University of Maribor. She is a representative of Slovenia in the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) and the European Network for the Fair Sharing of Working Time.