Contributors
Alfredo De Feo
Alfredo De Feo is professor at European Colleges of Parma, where he teaches courses on European Parliament and on European Finances. He is currently Research Fellow at the Alcide de Gasperi Centre of the Historical Archives of the European Union, in Florence. He has been Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS) at the European University Institute, Florence, (from 1/10/2014 to 31/12/2021). He has also been Distinguished Fellow at the Jean Monnet Centre of the New York University, in 2017, and Visiting professor at LUISS University, Rome and at Complutenses University, Madrid (2018), as part of the Master EUPADRA.
His areas of interest cover: History of the European Integration, European Institutions, the European Parliament, European Finances, Oversight of EU Policies. Reform of the EU.
Alfredo worked for the European Parliament from 1981 until end of 2015. He was Director for Budgetary affairs until 2008 and Director of the EP Library and Archives until 2015. He is speaker at European events, he has largely published on European Affairs.
Michael Shackleton
Michael Shackleton is Special Professor in European Institutions at the University of Maastricht and Former Head of the European Parliament Information Office in the UK. Professor Shackleton received his first degree in Politics and Philosophy in 1972 at Worcester College, Oxford. He joined the Secretariat of the European Parliament in 1981 and was then part of several committees in both EU and British political institutions.
During 1990 and 1991 he was a Visiting European Community Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley and from 1994 to 1999 he was a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges. Since 1999 he has been a Visiting Practitioner Fellow at Sussex University. In this first edition of the Jean Monnet Lecture Series in 2019/2020, Prof. Shackleton presents his new book on ‘Shaping Parliamentary Democracy’. The book analyses nearly 100 original interviews with Members of the European Parliament from across the European Union who were active between 1979 and 2019. The interviews capture the memories of the MEPs about their own roles and their assessment of what the parliament achieved in developing a European parliamentary democracy in the forty years following the first direct elections.
Elisabetta Olivi
Diplômée en économie et commerce, elle commence à travailler sur la politique agricole commune et la politique régionale auprès d’organisations agricoles et autorités régionales et locales en Italie. Elle entre au Parlement européen en 1981 auprès du Groupe communiste et apparentés où elle assiste le Président de la commission politique régionale M. Pancrazio de Pasquale, notamment sur les procédures législatives concernant les PIMs (Programmes Intégrés Méditerranéens) et la réforme des Fonds Structurels .
En 1988 elle passe à la Commission européenne (DG XVI/A2) où elle participe à la préparation et adoption des initiatives communautaires (art.11 du règlement CE 4253/88) en liaison avec les organisations et associations régionales au niveau européen. En 1991 elle devient membre du Service du Porte-Parole de la Commission où elle suit plusieurs Commissaires en matière de politique régionale, marché intérieur et concurrence. En 1999 elle est membre du Cabinet du Commissaire Mario Monti et s’occupe notamment de la politique antitrust, de l’agriculture et de la politique structurelle. En 2006, après un an passé à la Direction Générale Concurrence elle rejoint la DG Communication et ensuite la Représentation de la Commission au Royaume-Uni et en Italie. Elle a été porte-parole du Premier ministre et du gouvernement pendant le gouvernement Monti entre 2011 et 2013 quand elle est détachée auprès du Ministre des Affaires étrangères pour la Présidence italienne de l’Union. Après avoir pris sa retraite en 2015 elle sera membre du Conseil d’administration de l’Université de Venise pendant 8 ans.
Francis Brendan Jacobs
Francis Brendan Jacobs is an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at University College Dublin, and a Visiting Professor at the Collegio Europeo in Parma. Francis worked for the European Parliament from just before the first direct elections in 1979 until May 2016, as a staff member on various European Parliament committees, and also as the head of the European Parliament’s Liaison Office in Ireland from 2006-16. Since his retirement, he continues to give lectures and to write.
He is the author of “The EU after Brexit : political and institutional implications “(published in spring 2018 ), of “Jacobs EU Guide Book: the Landmark Sites of European Integration” (published in May 2022), the co-author of the “European Parliament”, with its 10th edition now in preparation, and editor and main author of a reference book on “Western European Political Parties”. He has also taken part in the Collecting Memories Project, interviewing former Members of the European Parliament for an oral archive housed at the European Union Historical Archives in Florence.
Francis has a great interest in history. He also has a love of travel writing and is the Chairman of the Michael Jacobs Foundation, a charity named after his late brother who was a prolific travel writer, especially on the Hispanic world. The Foundation seeks to promote new travel writing on Spain and Latin America and funds an annual Michael Jacobs Travel Prize.
Francis now lives in Dublin but travels extensively, especially to Italy, where his mother came from. He is a dual Irish and British citizen, and is married with one daughter.