Franca Maria Feisel has won the 2026 Mauro Cappelletti Prize for the best doctoral thesis in Comparative and European Law. The prize, awarded annually by the EUI Department of Law, was presented at the EUI Conferring Ceremony on 19 June 2026.
“My thesis on the EU's democratic self-defence was a project very dear to my heart. I firmly believe that a democratic system and society are worth defending, especially nowadays that they are under political attack in Europe and beyond. But defending democracy must not mean conserving the status quo. Rather, we should approach it as an enabler for rethinking and democratising democracy itself,” Feisel said.
Feisel defended her thesis ‘The EU's democratic self-defence: a reflexive approach’ at the Department of Law in December 2025. The thesis examines how the European Union responds to democratic regression across Europe, and the legal and normative foundations of its role in defending democracy. Moving beyond traditional ideas of militant democracy, it develops the concept of "reflexive democracy" as a way of understanding democratic self-defence within the EU's multi-level political and legal order. Drawing together democratic theory, political philosophy, and legal analysis, the thesis asks how democracy can be defended while remaining democratic itself.
The jury statement praised the thesis for its genuine interdisciplinarity, intellectual creativity, and close integration of democratic theory with democratic practice. It singled out the rigour of her legal analysis, the novelty of her argument, as well as the thoughtful, actionable nature of her practical proposals.
The Mauro Cappelletti Prize is awarded annually for the best EUI doctoral thesis in Comparative and European Law, including comparative approaches to the protection of fundamental and human rights. It honours the memory of Mauro Cappelletti, a leading scholar of comparative law and a professor at the EUI, the University of Florence, and Stanford University. First awarded in 2005, the prize exists thanks to a donation from EUI alumnus Robert Helm and his wife Mimie, in memory of Cappelletti, Helm's former teacher.