Septimius Pârvu is an expert in good governance and elections at Expert Forum. He has over 13 years of experience in coordinating projects related to active citizenship, education, election monitoring and political clientelism. He is an experienced trainer and has coordinated since 2012 the School for Democracy, a program dedicated to young civic activists and teachers from Romania and the Republic of Moldova.

Since 2009 he has participated as an expert or coordinated several election monitoring campaigns in Romania and internationally. Between 2012 and 2024, he coordinated 14 election observation campaigns, attended by more than 7,000 observers. Septimius has international electoral experience in countries such as the Republic of Moldova, Slovakia, Lithuania, Malta, Latvia, the UK, Denmark, as well as in several Balkan states. In 2015 he observed the use of Internet voting in Estonia and has an extensive experience related to the use of alternative voting methods. He has constantly collaborated with international organizations such as the Council of Europe or the OSCE / ODIHR. Since 2021 he is a member of the National Coordination Committee of the Partnership for Open Government in Romania.

Septimius analyzes political clientelism, the financing of political parties and election campaigns, and has published a significant number of reports on these topics. Within the program dedicated to political financing, he developed the only platform in Romania that includes data on the history of financing political parties and electoral campaigns in the last 15 years – www.banipartide.ro. For several years he has been coordinating the program related to political clientelism, with an emphasis on the implementation of investment programs for local administration such as PNDL, constantly publishing articles and developing the only interactive platform that reflects the implementation of the latter.

Septimius graduated with a master’s degree in European and Romanian Politics from the Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Bucharest.

Clara Volintiru is Director of the Bucharest Office of the German Marshall Fund and of the Black Sea Trust (BST). Prior to joining the GMF she was the Director of the New Economy and Society Program at the Aspen Institute of Romania, and a consultant for international organizations such as the World Bank, European Commission, Eurofound, and Committee of the Regions. She is also a Professor of International Political Economy at the Bucharest University of Economic Studies (ASE), and her recent publications appeared with Oxford University Press, Palgrave, Routledge, Springer, and in peer-reviewed journals such as Journal of European Public Policy, European Political Science Review, Acta Politica, CESifo Economic Studies, European Politics and Society, Eastern European Politics, European Political Science, or Research & Politics.