Building a freer future is a task that requires large-scale collaboration, but also the great movers and shakers who get a real change going. With our Leader of the Year award, we celebrate such individuals who are on the forefront of the struggle for liberty in Europe. And our 2026’s Leader of the Year is David Briguglio Brown, our National Coordinator for Malta.
David only joined our programs last April as our first volunteer in Malta, and he quickly got to work at building up a community. He founded a team that has quickly grown, and built up a social media presence as well as presence in the network, despite only being 17 years old high school student at the time.
Yet his age has not stopped David from making a real impact. When the European Commission first came with the Chat Control proposal, David was among the leaders of the international student campaign pushing against it. He launched a national petition that quickly got over 1500 signatures with online content reaching over 3 million views, and which got endorsed by one of the Maltese political parties, and even reached the Maltese Prime Minister. Following the campaign, the first version of Chat Control, which sought to end encrypted conversations in Europe, failed to pass the vote.
Following the success of the Chat Control campaign, David and his team did not slow down. They launched the Politics Made Simple project, which makes politics and classical liberal ideas more accessible to young students and the team’s peers, through simple explainer videos, infoposts, as well as on campus interviews.
The project transformed again prior to the Maltese general election earlier this year, when David and team Malta reviewed the respective party platforms, culminating in a literal town square event in the capital city of Valetta, hosting representatives from all major political parties, whom David interviewed on topics pertinent to the Maltese youth.
Additionally, when the Maltese Government floated a blanket social media ban for minors, team Malta acted fast again, submitting a formal, evidence-based consultation to the National Youth Council and the government, offering policymakers an alternative rooted in the EU’s existing DSA framework. When the government began weighing whether to join the so-called “Board of Peace”, the team’s principled opposition was picked up by Times of Malta, ensuring the skeptical student perspective made it into a national outlet’s coverage of the debate.
Despite only launching last year, the team has gained such attention on the national level that they got nominated to a Maltese national competition as one of the finalists of student group of the year, and David himself got nominated as one of the finalists in the category of Malta’s political activist of the year.
David and his team are far from done though – while they are starting a podcast and hosting a John Galt School (an eight-week long course on Objectivism), David also became the Director for Deregulate.EU, our upcoming platform hosting policy-oriented campaigns all around the EU and beyond.
For the great impact he accomplished before even entering university, David Briguglio Brown is our undisputed Leader of the Year for 2026.
