20 years in EU

Come and debate at the next Café Evropa regional debate series! This time we will be in Semily. What do you think of the Czech Republic's 20 years in the EU? Are you worried about what the migration pact, the Green Deal will bring? Have European subsidies helped the development of the town? What has the EU given and taken away from you? We want to hear from you!

This year the Czech Republic celebrates twenty years of membership in the European Union. In the meantime, the EU has gone through turbulent years associated with a series of crises - from economic to migration to pandemic and security. However, the wealth of the Czechs has increased by more than 40 percent over the years and the standard of living has reached 90 percent of the European average. This is according to data presented by the Office of the Government of the Czech Republic on the occasion of the anniversary, while Czech exports grew by more than 320 percent thanks to EU membership. Žiga Faktor, head of EUROPEUM Institute's Brussels office, comments on the other challenges the EU now faces.

How can the EU enlargement process regain its lost momentum? And how can we learn from previous rounds of enlargement? These questions are answered by a group of authors together with EUROPEUM Institute senior researcher Jana Juzová in a new publication within the REWEU project.

For 20 years, the Czechs have benefited billions of euros from EU membership, yet they are more reticent about the Union than others. Where does this opposition come from? How do the Czechs see the EU and their role in it? Comments Vít Havelka, Senior Research Fellow at EUROPEUM Institute for the Finnish public radio and TV.

We invite you to a public recording of the Café Evropa podcast. Come and discuss twenty years of open Europe with representatives of the generation that has lived most of its life there, as well as those who remember the past regime and the waiting at the borders. What do you remember?