Dennis Radtke was born in 1979 in Wattenscheid, Germany, a district of Bochum in the Ruhr Area. The Ruhr Area is Germany’s biggest metropolitan district, as well as the third largest in Europe. The industry sector plays a dominant role within this region. Radtke is the second child of three brothers and is married to his wife, with whom he shares a daughter. After finishing secondary school in 1998, Dennis Radtke began an apprenticeship as an industry merchant at a medium-sized company located in Bochum. He became a member of the trade union covering the industries of mining, chemistry, and energy (IG BCE) and engaged within the youth and apprentice representation of the trade union. From 2006 to 2008, Dennis Radtke completed a trainee program of IG BCE to become a trade union secretary. He remained in this position until his election to the European Parliament 10 years later. Dennis Radtke became a member of the European Parliament for the CDU (Christian Democratic Union of Germany) in 2017. Within the Parliament, he is a member of the Committee for Employment and Social Affairs (EMPL), as well as a deputy member of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE). In July 2019, he was elected as coordinator of the European People's Party (EPP) for the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs. In addition to that, Radtke is a member of the delegation for relations with the Korean peninsula and a deputy member of the delegation for relations with Japan. Dennis Radtke is a member of the CDU and its association CDA (Christian Democratic Employees' Association). Since 2019, he is chairman of the CDA in North Rhine-Westphalia and deputy chairman of the CDA Germany. He has been a member of the board of the CDU in North RhineWestphalia for more than seven years and has been working in the federal committee of experts on European Politics since 2016. Already since 2008, Dennis Radtke has been a member of the assembly of the regional association of the Ruhr area (RVR), the so-called ‘Ruhr parliament’.

Isabelle Schömann was elected as Confederal Secretary at the ETUC’s 14th Congress in Vienna in May 2019. She heads ETUC policy on workers’ participation and European Works Councils, industrial policy and company law, competition law, labour law and human rights, single market legislation, digitalisation, standardisation, and corporate social responsibility. Previously, she was a principal adviser to the Regulatory Scrutiny Board of the European Commission providing quality control of all impact assessments and major evaluations by Commission services. From 2005 to 2016, she was a senior researcher with the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) in Brussels, covering European social dialogue and European and comparative labour law, corporate governance and workers’ participation, fundamental social rights, and impacts of the 2008 crisis on workers' rights and of the Commission’s Regulatory and Fitness Performance Programme (REFIT) on labour rights. Isabelle was legal advisor to the European Economic and Social Committee Workers’ Group on the European Pillar of Social Rights. She has a postgraduate degree in social and labour law from the Sorbonne in Paris and has authored and co-authored a wide range of studies on trade union issues. 

I am a speaker, communications expert, strategist and philosopher but above all I am a cosmopolitan and I firmly believe that the great opportunity of the world of today resides in the fact that we can live the adventure of many cultures and manifold identities.Socrates famously stated that the unexamined life is not worth living and I believe that this is even more true today as we are bombarded with so much information and lost as to what to believe and what to distrust. Moreover, many people make a living out of trying to deceive others, so we had better be aware of the pitfalls.In our postmodern world, truth is often a matter of mere opinion and the battle of opinions is raging all around us. I am passionate about deconstructing fallacies, debunking myths, giving a voice to all perspectives and allowing new hybrid cultures to emerge.Communications are key and I devote my professional and private life to making sure that people have the right skills and tools to make their opinions count. Nothing saddens me more when I see how many valuable opinions are never given a chance as they are overpowered by the clamor of empty rhetoric. When a valuable perspective is not given a chance to be heard, it is not only the person expressing it who loses out, but society as a whole. 

Rebekah Smith is Deputy Director in the Social Affairs department of BusinessEurope, managing the following policy areas: sustainability, CSR and diversity; industrial relations, labour law and working conditions; and social/employment aspects of digitalisation. She has been working at BusinessEurope for ten years and in the field of EU affairs for fifteen years. She is a member of the management committee of the platform on EU implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. She coordinates employer members of the European Foundation for Living and Working Conditions. Previously she was Policy and Communications Manager for a Brussels-based consultancy specialised in assisting UK SME representatives to be active on EU policy, as well as working for the EU Representation office of a UK region. Rebekah has a Master's degree in European studies and studied at Hull University in the UK and Osnabrueck University in Germany.