Herta Däubler-Gmelin is a German lawyer, academic and politician of the Social Democratic Party. She served as Federal Minister of Justice from 1998 to 2002, and as a Member of the Bundestag from 1972 to 2009. She currently teaches as an honorary professor of political science at the Free University of Berlin, particularly on international relations and human rights, and was the Hemmerle Professor at RWTH Aachen University in 2011. She is married to the legal scholar Wolfgang Däubler.

Joseph Martin "Joschka" Fischer is a German retired politician of Alliance 90/The Greens. He served as the foreign minister and as the vice chancellor of Germany in the cabinet of Gerhard Schröder from 1998 to 2005. Fischer has been a leading figure in the German Greens since the 1970s, and according to opinion polls, he was the most popular politician in Germany for most of the Schröder government's duration. Following the September 2005 election, in which the Schröder government was defeated, he left office on 22 November 2005. In September 2010, he supported the creation of the Spinelli Group, a Europarliamentarian initiative founded with a view to reinvigorate efforts to federalise the European Union.