Carola Rackete

Carola Rackete (pronounced [kaˈʁoːla ʁaˈkeːtə]; born 8 May 1988) is a German conservation ecologist, activist, politician and former ship captain. She was elected to the European Parliament as an independent candidate for the Left Party on 9 June 2024. Rackete participated in several research expeditions to Antarctica and the Southern Ocean and is co-founder of the Antarctic Rights initiative. She also supported the Extinction Rebellion movement and took part in forest protests in Sweden, as well as the occupations of the Hambach Forest and the Dannenrod Forest in Germany. Between 2016 and 2019, she occasionally volunteered for non-governmental sea rescue organisations in the Mediterranean. In June 2019, she was arrested for docking a migrant rescue vessel without authorization in the port of Lampedusa, Italy. The custodial judge considered Rackete's actions as justified because she had a duty to save lives at sea and ruled that Rackete should not have been arrested. In 2021, the pending investigation was formally dismissed, since the state prosecutor did not see a reason to proceed to court.