On 4 May 2025, the Border Stories Prize, themed The Transformative Power of Dialogue, announced its inaugural winners in Trieste, during the closing event of the travelling Stories of the Border / Border Stories series. Organised by Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, with the support of the Autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, GECT GO/EZTS GO, and Are We Europe, the prize drew more than sixty submissions from across Europe. The international jury was chaired by journalist and writer Marzio G. Mian.
Five investigations received awards in total; two were supported by Journalismfund Europe: one examining climate displacement in Greece and Sicily, the other documenting the deportation of homeless EU citizens from the Netherlands.
The winners
"Migrants in Their Own Land: Climate Displacement at Europe's External Borders" - Lydia Emmanouilidou & Stefania D'Ignoti - Greece / Sicily
When floods devastated central Greece in 2023, displaced residents of Thessaly were housed not in permanent accommodation but in a refugee reception centre, living alongside asylum seekers, separated by fences and administrative categories. This cross-border investigation asks whether a decade of migration crisis management has equipped Greece and Italy to handle climate-driven displacement within their own borders, or whether overlapping crises are exposing deeper political fault lines. The project has since sparked community dialogue in Thessaly and broader media interest.
"The Price of Clean Streets: How the Netherlands Deports Homeless Eastern Europeans" - Andrada Lăutaru, Zuza Nazaruk, Willemijn Sneep - Netherlands / Poland / Romania
Despite the EU's free movement principles, homeless EU citizens — predominantly Poles and Romanians — are increasingly being expelled from the Netherlands. The number of deported Poles doubled between 2020 and 2024, from 156 to 356; some individuals have been deported more than twenty times, only to return immediately under the same open borders that made their expulsion possible. Based on more than thirty interviews and a review of deportation notices, the investigation finds no coherent reintegration policy in either the sending or receiving countries.
Further winners
- Martin Fornusek, "Spies, Migration and War: Ukraine's Hungarians in a Transforming Borderland"
- Wouter van de Klippe, "Migrant Truckers Who Keep Europe Moving"
- Ana Curic, "Follow the Money: Why the EU, Not China, Matters Most to Serbia and Georgia"
Both investigations illustrate what cross-border collaboration makes visible: by examining multiple countries simultaneously, patterns emerge that nationally focused reporting tends to miss. Journalismfund Europe supported both projects in the conviction that investigative journalism addressing shared European challenges serves a public interest no single national newsroom can adequately cover alone.
More info: fondazionefeltrinelli.it
