ECPR’s Council votes to remove Gianluca Passarelli from its Executive Committee

At an extraordinary meeting of Council on 20 November, Official Representatives of ECPR’s Member institutions voted to remove Gianluca Passarelli from the Executive Committee.

The meeting followed a process begun in 2022, when complaints of alleged professional misconduct by Professor Passarelli were received by ECPR following its Innsbruck General Conference and the Italian Political Science Association Conference.

The Executive Committee considered Professor Passarelli’s actions in these instances, and on occasions within EC meetings, to have fallen well below the standards of behaviour expected of a member of ECPR’s executive body. In adherence to the Constitution, the Executive Committee referred the matter to Speaker of Council, Thomas Poguntke.

Following the process set out in the Constitution, Professor Poguntke convened an independent Committee of Investigation, drawn from across the ECPR community, to carry out its own investigation. The Committee of Investigation found that in three of the four complaints they reviewed, Professor Passarelli had breached the Code of Conduct, and on one occasion his actions had brought ECPR into disrepute.

The Executive Committee agreed on the importance and necessity of upholding the Code of Conduct, and called an extraordinary meeting of Council on 20 November, where it asked members to vote on a resolution to remove Gianluca Passarelli from the Executive Committee. 138 Official Representatives attended the meeting, and 133 votes were cast: 96 (72%) yes and 37 (28%) no. A two-thirds majority (67%) was needed for the resolution to be passed; voting results were independently verified and the resolution was carried.