Winners of the European Parliament’s 2025 Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize for Journalism will be announced October 21.
Three cross-border investigations supported by the Investigative Journalism for Europe (IJ4EU) fund have been shortlisted for the 2025 Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize for Journalism, one of Europe’s most prestigious awards for public-interest reporting.
The European Parliament announced that 10 investigations were selected as finalists for the fifth edition of the prize, which honours outstanding journalistic work that embodies the values of the late Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was assassinated in 2017 for exposing corruption at the highest levels of power.
The IJ4EU-supported finalists are:
The Forever Lobbying Project, an investigation by 46 journalists in 16 countries that exposed a long-running campaign by the PFAS industry to weaken proposed EU regulations.
Ecocide in Iraq: How big oil companies are turning marshlands into deserts, which revealed how energy giants have contributed to environmental destruction in southern Iraq’s fragile wetland ecosystems. The story was part of the IJ4EU-supported Making Iraq Dry investigation.
Les forçats du cybercrime (Cyberslaves), which exposed how tens of thousands of Nepalese, Ugandans, Moroccans, Vietnamese and Ethiopians are held hostage in scam centers run by different Chinese mafia groups. Part of the IJ4EU-backed Cyber-Scam Slavery investigation.
Launched in 2020, the Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize is awarded annually by the European Parliament to professional journalists or teams of journalists working in the 27 EU member states. The prize recognises in-depth reporting that serves the public interest and reinforces the role of a free press in democracy.
The winner, chosen by an independent jury of journalists and civil society representatives from each EU country, will receive €20,000 at a ceremony on October 21, 2025, at the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
This year’s shortlisted stories were selected from 316 submissions filed between May and July. Topics range from the arms trade and environmental crimes to the misuse of EU funds and digital exploitation.
The IJ4EU fund — managed by the International Press Institute (IPI), the European Journalism Centre, the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom and Arena for Journalism in Europe — supports cross-border investigative journalism in the public interest across Europe.
Caruana Galizia, whose reporting on corruption and financial crime in Malta made her a target, was killed by a car bomb in 2017. Her legacy continues to inspire investigative journalists across Europe.
The European Parliament said the award demonstrates “its strong support for investigative journalism and the importance of a free press”.