In Vivo, the newsletter that takes you to the heart of European news

My name is Sergio Berardo. I play the hurdy-gurdy and other traditional Occitan instruments, and I’ve been singing in Occitan for many years. The hurdy-gurdy is an iconic, totemic instrument in our valleys in northern Italy, comparable to the Celtic harp in Ireland. But not so long ago, no one was interested in the hurdy-gurdy, because it was considered old-fashioned.

Back in June, I went to an abortion clinic for an abortion, accompanied by two of my relatives. It wasn’t a very good time for me and what followed only added to the unnecessary stress and suffering.

My name is Aliaksandr Yaroshevich. I’m an investigative journalist currently living in Vilnius. I moved here four years ago because working as a journalist in my home country, Belarus, became impossible. I was forced to choose between prison and freedom. So, I decided to choose freedom and to continue working.

Crouched in a tent, I help my 4-year-old daughter take off her shoes and trousers, then wash her with baby wipes. There aren’t any showers in this emergency shelter, only sinks for washing up or brushing your teeth. “Mummy, the toothpaste stings.” “It can’t, it's strawberry flavour,” I repeat. We cling to the little everyday things as best we can, but Eva is well aware of the situation.

In the summer of 2023, I boarded the Ocean Viking, the SOS Méditerranée rescue ship, for a six-week mission. It was my first expedition and remains the most memorable. The ship departed from Civitavecchia, in Italy, with a crew of 34 people. After a week of training at sea, we began patrolling international waters off the coast of Libya. The very next day, there was a boat in trouble.

On the 25th of June, I landed in Budapest to report on the banned Equality Parade. And at the same time, I became a smuggler. Since 2021, Hungary has had a law prohibiting the sale of books with LGBTQIA+ themes. They can’t be sold within 200 metres of churches, schools and kindergartens, which in practice makes it impossible to sell them in cities. In addition, they must be wrapped in plastic and marked as 18+, like porn magazines used to be in kiosks. This is one of the reasons why the book “Kraina baśni jest dla wszystkich” (translation of the Hungarian book “Meseország mindenkié”, “Fairyland is for everyone, in English”, ed.), published in Poland by Krytyka Polityczna, has been banned in Hungary. So I decided to smuggle it in. 

I care deeply for Epano Elounda, and whenever I’m there —for several months each year— I’m eager to participate in initiatives to improve village life. This year, I proposed an idea: to raise funds for two swings designed for children with disabilities. When I shared the idea with friends in the village, they were thrilled. Their support was wholehearted.

I’m not an activist. I go out and protest, but I’ve never done anything illegal to defend my ideas. When my friend Lara told me about the Global Movement To Gaza and their march to Gaza, I just thought that it could really make a change. The aim of this march was not to enter Gaza —that’s impossible— but to enter Rafah through the Sinai and do a sit-in, a gathering of bodies from all over the world to say to Israel : “What you are doing is absolutely immoral.”

My name is Samad. I was born in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. My education, life, and thoughts were formed there. Ever since I was a child, I’ve always loved to write things. Making up stories, writing a diary…it became a habit for me. But the problem is that in Azerbaijan, anyone who holds a pen in their hand and can speak, is dangerous for the authorities. Because it poses a threat to their authority. It’s like a religion: you have accept it without questioning. And if you have a dissenting opinion, it’s even more dangerous.

In the moments before I found myself on the ground, coughing and checking if the floors above were about to collapse, I was sitting on a bench in the basement. I was chatting with the brigade’s press officer when we heard a thunderous, ear-piercing crack: a guided aerial bomb had just hit our immediate vicinity.

We were so emotional the night we arrived in Strasbourg after 13 days of cycling; everyone was crying. We were given some medals and certificates as a “thank you.” Then, the next day, we were received at the European Parliament. Most of us agreed that our bike ride protest was the closest we could get to what we consider the ideal way of fighting corruption in our country. You know, this is as good as it gets for the moment, given the available options in Serbia right now.

I’ve always dreamed of having a “picture-perfect” family. As a young girl, I already saw myself as a mother. That’s why, at forty, after a series of broken relationships, I felt the need to create a family—even if it’s on my own. I watched friends and acquaintances become mothers and felt a bittersweet emotion: I was happy for them because they finally had their family, and I felt like the “aunt” of their children. But at the same time, there was a bitter aftertaste, because I had not been blessed with the chance to become a mother.

In Hungary, a new draft law threatens to sanction media outlets receiving foreign funding, including private donations and funding from the EU. Our partner 444 is one of the main targets. This is no longer a warning: it’s a direct attack on press freedom and concerns all of Europe. We have dreaded this moment for months. What the Hungarian government has done exceeds the worst-case scenario.

I didn’t know what burnout was until it happened to me. In that moment I didn’t know what I should or shouldn’t do. I just wanted to scream and quit my job—the NGO I had created and where I was working.

It all began in 2015 with three words from my three-year-old daughter. I was giving her a bath, when she suddenly turned to me and said: "Daddy touched me." I was happily married at the time, my other child was four months old. I spent the next two and a half months terrified, lying in bed shaking.

Here in Sicily, we’re well prepared. We grew up in a place where it’s almost normal to regularly not have running water in our homes. This probably sounds strange for those who are used to always having running water —like in the rest of Europe— but in the vast majority of rural areas, especially in central and southern Sicily, tap water is still rationed. That’s why we’ve learnt how to manage this situation on our own.

At the end of January, I received an email from an organization I work with. “Grant suspension” was the subject. “I am writing to you today with incredibly difficult news. We are unable to draw down the funding for our work and must pause all our activities funded by US government resources”. I didn’t expect the effects of a decision made by Trump to affect me, my colleagues, and the media organizations I know and value in Europe, so quickly.

I live and work in the same city, but not in the same country. The island where I live, Cyprus, is divided into two by a border which cuts through its capital, Nicosia. I’ve been living in the southern part of Nicosia for a year and a half now. However, my job, my family, and many of my friends are still on the other side of the border. So, my life and my daily routine is split in two.

I remember the day my mum introduced us to my stepdad, I was 15 or 16. They had just got married in the Congo, where we lived until I was 8. My sister Glodie and I didn't like him from the start. He was very intimidating and he scared us.

I will never forget the image of that boy, Jamal. Lying there on the ground in the woods, half naked, barefoot, his feet curled. What had happened to him had happened to many people: he had been found by the Croatian police, beaten, robbed of everything, stripped and sent barefoot back across the border.

Have you seen reports about Greek teachers sleeping in tents on some islands? That’s us. Supply teachers are notified just two to three days before the start of term whether or not they’ve got a job for the year —and they are sent to cover vacancies all over the country. So, you have to pack quickly, travel to that school’s town or village and find a rental ASAP. I’ve been teaching since 2010. I love my profession. There are magical moments with the kids. But I’m 46. I can’t go through this hardship and uncertainty again this summer.

Anna M. Sevcsik is a Hungarian communication specialist. The trauma of her three miscarriages inspired her to set up Élet.Érzés Alapítvány (Life.Feeling Foundation). Over the past 10 years, the Foundation has helped thousands of parents mentally and financially. They work with a range of medical specialists and psychologists, exploring topics such as infertility, grief, and the mental health of new parents, through events, one-on-one support, and fundraisers.

Annalisa is a content creator interested in plant-based cooking and sustainable living, ever since she made the decision to change her eating habits by going vegan. Since 2020, she has been known as the Little Vegan Witch and has a large following on YouTube and Instagram. 

When he retired in 2015, Vincent embarked on a bike tour to deliver important but non-urgent letters to people he didn't know. His initiative inspired many others to do the same, so in 2020 he launched the Facteurs humains Agency, which today involves around 230 people.

Masho is a young freelance journalist based in Tbilisi. Since the 28th November, she has spent day and night outdoors with the tens of thousands of Georgians calling for new parliamentary elections. She tells us about the evolution of this citizens' revolt.

One year ago, Gino's daughter, Giulia, was murdered by her ex-boyfriend. Everytime he thinks of her, Gino “feels dead inside”, but he continues to forge ahead for his other two children, Elena and Davide. Since Giulia's death, the family have decided speak out and confront the problem of feminicide and gender-based violence.

Over the past twenty years, Jean-Jacques has accompanied around twenty people in their suicides through the Swiss association Exit, which he has been a member of since 2000 and co-president since 2018. For him, helping people like Suzanne to “leave a life that no longer resembles life” is an obvious choice, and an experience that has made him more serene and attentive to others.

Nadya is a 29-year old journalist and video maker. Originally from Moscow, she is currently working in exile. She has been doing Brazilian jiu jitsu on and off for 2,5 years and holds a white belt (the beginning rank) with four stripes, one stripe short of the blue belt.

Samuel is a cattle farmer in the north of the Auvergne region. Passionate about his profession, he is waging a peaceful battle against the industrial superpowers, in favour of autonomous, ecological agriculture that cares about the welfare of animals, the living conditions of farmers and the health of consumers. He calls his philosophy “sensiculture”: the cultivation of common sense.

Fausta is the daughter, sister, niece and wife of Guinean opponents repressed by the dictatorship of Teodoro Obiang. She herself is a fighter for freedom and against the impunity of a tyranny that has been in power since 1979. She has been living in exile in Madrid for seven years and is one of the initiators of a lawsuit in the Spanish National Court for the kidnapping of four activists, including her brother Martín.

Erjugen Meta is an Albanian man based in Milan, who spent almost twenty years in prison. Today, thanks to the classes he took while he was behind bars, he’s a luthier, earning a living by making musical instruments. His story is more unique than common.

Ana is 27 and lives in Tbilisi, Georgia. She works for two queer-feminist organisations and for the the largest civil society movement in her country. All three organisations, as well as Ana and her colleagues personally, are at risk of being labelled “Foreign Agents”, since the Georgian government adopted a replication of a repressive Russian law. She talks about her fight against this law.

Vincenzo is a fisherman who lives in Sapri, a village of 6,000 inhabitants in southern Italy. Despite his love for the profession that his family has practised for generations, he dreams of a different life for his children. Between regulations and climate change, making a living as small-scale fishermen has become almost impossible.

Louise is a driven woman who always pushes herself to excel. At the moment, she is preparing for the Paralympics, but already needs to plan for the next move in her career –all of that, whilst living with a disability.

Fode*, a 15-year-old Guinean, arrived in Paris in September after crossing the Mediterranean. Now, like most unaccompanied minors, he finds himself in a legal limbo where the authorities won’t look after him, in conditions that are harsher than he could ever have imagined.

Olga is 35 years old and lives in Kyiv, Ukraine. She has been working as a clown in hospitals in Kyiv for more than five years. In March 2023, with her colleague Marina she co-founded an NGO called БУП. With the Italian organisation Soccorso Clowns, under the mentorship of her teacher, Vladimir Olshansky, they teach clowns all over Europe.

Marlene is 32 years old and one of the ‘extremely rich’, having inherited her multi-millionaire grandmother’s fortune. For years, she has been thinking about how to redistribute this wealth. Iin 2024 she officially launched the Guter Rat: an assembly of 50 citizens pulled out of a hat to decide together on the best ways of democratically giving her fortune back to society.

Joseph is 56 years old. He comes from a long line of Maltese farmers. Because of climate change, he has had to change the pace of his planting and invest in huge reservoirs to cope with the drought affecting the country. But that doesn’t stop him from worrying about the future of the island’s land and its farmers.

Anne is a long-standing environmental activist. During her career as an elected representative, she found that “political courage was variable”. So after her last mandate in 2015, she joined forces with Elders for the Climate in a long and victorious legal battle, which took this association of women over 64, to the European Court of Human Rights.

Valerius is the owner of a moving company. He was born in Belarus but came to Germany when he was 18 as a Spätaussiedler, which means he is a German emigrant who returned to Germany long after his family left the country.

Sylvia, a 49-year-old carpenter, lives in Dortmund with her two children. One year ago, she joined Letzte Generation (Last Generation). The protest group, known for hunger strikes, throwing mashed potato on paintings in museums or glueing themselves to the street, recently announced their aim to run for the European elections.

Róisín is the president of the NUI Galway Feminist Society where she studies BCL law and human rights. Over the past few weeks, she campaigned in favour of an amendment of the 87-year-old Irish Constitution to get rid of the references to the role of “women within the home”. That proposal was rejected during a referendum on the 8th March, but Róisín has not changed her mind: the text should be updated.

Jupiter was born and raised in Naples. They have two Instagram profiles that coexist in the image of their two identities: that of Jupiter, a drag performer on the Neapolitan ballroom scene, and that of Antonio, the name on their identity card. They told us about the feminielli, people with fluid gender identities who have been present in Naples for centuries.

Vivienne grew up on her family farm in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. She is now studying agricultural sciences to become a farmer like her grandfather, father, and brother. But she worries about the future for German farmers.

Twelve years ago, Masha left Russia to study and then to work and live in various European countries. She shares her impressions with us, from her ten-day trip to Moscow, where she hadn’t set foot since the invasion of Ukraine.

Today, Ville proudly wears a cap bearing the words “straight edge”, but it took him a year before he publicly identified himself as such, for “fear of drinking again”. As this Finnish photographer and musician prepares a book on his journey from heavy drinking to a lifestyle free of ethanol, tobacco and meat, he reflects on his life before and after.

Bessan was born into a Palestinian family who took refuge in Syria, a country she in turn left because of her involvement in the Syrian revolution. She likes to say that she is Palestinian, because “it’s a source of pride, and a blessing, but also, in her heart, a source of sadness”. It’s a feeling and a struggle that she tries to explain to us, even if, she warns, “as we say in Arabic, ‘the hand that’s in the water is not the hand that’s in the fire’” – we can’t feel what she feels.

The victims are not only human. The losses are not only material. The earth, the air and the environment are also affected. This is what I noticed during my various reports from Ukraine. In June 2023, everyone was able to make the same observation as they watched the shocking images of flooded villages, poisoned water and people fleeing their homes.

Daria, her husband and two of her children, left their home in Moscow after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, settled in Tel Aviv, Israel, and left her home there, too, after the Hamas attacks on October 7th. She explains what it feels like to flee and leave your home twice.

Aulonë is the Senior Editor of Kosovo 2.0 magazine. She has a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Prishtina and a graduate certificate in women, gender, and sexuality studies from the University of Kansas, U.S. Aulonë wanted to tell us about her “strange” relationship with the EU.

Eleonora grew up in Italy. She now lives in Fier and for the past year and a half has been working on the KeBuono project via the Engim association. In 2018, for the first time in Albania, the association was entrusted with the management of a property that had been confiscated from the mafia and which is now home to the social patisserie. The country now has two more.

After a nine-month blockade, Azerbaijan launched an offensive to reclaim Nagorno-Karabakh, forcing more than 100,000 people to flee. Astrig, a journalist for ereb, followed two sisters who were first seperated by the blockade and then reunited by this forced exodus.

Belligerency is the stage name of Sergejs, an artist and co-founder of the drag & queer show Propaganda in Brussels. Belligerency is Latvian and Armenian, and with his co-founders Krasna and King Kovaci they seek to spotlight marginalised and erased queerness and give voice to the LGBTQIA+ community in Eastern & Southern Europe and West Asia. Their past shows included performances on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Armenian genocide, political repressions in the Soviet Union and revolutions.

This summer, Nicolas and 24 other French firefighters spent a month and a half in Greece on a pre-positioning mission. The mission, which was created by the European Civil Protection Mechanism, was designed to enable units from different European countries to coordinate their forces in anticipation of the summer fires. Over the course of two months, Nicolas and his colleagues fought fires that ravaged hundreds of thousands of hectares of countryside. As the mission draws to a close, the captain looks back on these difficult weeks.

As a trans person, Mark didn’t feel he was in a very “supportive environment” in his native Russia and had long dreamed of leaving. The conflict in Ukraine and the possibility of being called up prompted him to do so sooner than expected. But the various requests he has made for a humanitarian visa in order to pursue his life elsewhere, have not yet been answered, leaving Mark “stuck” in Tajikistan, for eleven months, just waiting.

Nour was manager of the McDonald’s restaurant in Saint-Barthélémy, in the northern suburbs of Marseille, and is now manager of Après M, the fast-food restaurant created by former employees of the American firm after a long struggle. He has chosen to recount one of the first particularly intense stages of this struggle, which he believes proves that you have to be prepared to go all the way, because “it may take 1 year, 2 years, 10 years, 20 years, but it will pay off”.

When Marat was born in Baku in 1989, the Soviet Union was on its last legs and the first war between Armenia and Azerbaijan was breaking out. The creation of the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh by the Armenians living in the region, which officially belonged to Azerbaijan, was at stake. The first war (1989-1994) was followed by a second in 2020. In the meantime, Marat, his Armenian father and his Azerbaijani mother, immigrated to Moscow and then Seattle. Marat tells us about the influence this conflict has had on his life and identity.

Thomas is a Breton born and bred. He left the region when he was 18 and has been living in Malta for five years with his Hungarian wife and eight-year-old twins. Today, he is capable of conducting a conversation in eight languages, but he has one major regret. When he was a kid, his family never taught him Breton. And so, when his sons were born, he “naturally” decided to speak to them in the language.

Simon is a Belgian environmental activist. On the 25th March, he, alongside thousands of others, took part in a two-day demonstration in Sainte-Soline, France, to prevent the construction of a mega-basin, a huge 628,000m3 water reservoir. The demonstration was severely repressed – more than 5,000 tear bombs were thrown – resulting in 47 gendarmes being injured and 200 demonstrators, including 40 seriously injured. By going to Sainte-Soline Simon feels that he has taken part in a very important moment in the environmental movement.

Silvana is a retired gynaecologist in Italy but continues to provide consultations. In her country, abortion has been legal since 1978, but medical staff can invoke the right to 'conscientious objection' and refuse to perform abortions. In 2021, seven out of ten gynaecologists in Italy were conscientious objectors. She chose to share with us a memory that illustrates the dangers of conscientious objection and her concerns about respect for the right to abortion in Italy.