Central Europe

We would like to invite you to the next debate in the EU± series, this time on the topic "Election season in Central Europe - what lies ahead for our region?". The debate will take place online on 19 June at 18:00.

Lucia Rybnikárová writes in her paper on effective EU foreign and security policy about the need to have a strategic vision of the EU to the world and the political will and commitment of the member-states.

The director of our Brussel's office, Žiga Faktor, gave a commentary to World Politics Review on their new article Germany's New Government Could Spell Trouble for the Visegrad Four. The New German Government had been getting positive reviews even before it took office in early December. But not everyone is pleased with the new coalition government, one of which is Viktor Orban.

A Policy Brief on the appropriate response of Central European countries to China's expansion in the EU neighbourhood was produced during a study visit to the Brussels office of the Think Visegrad platform. The author of the paper, Jakub Jakóbowski, focuses on the possibilities of engaging Central Europe in the EU's global connectivity agenda, implemented under the Global Gateway initiative. He highlights links with the Western Balkans and the Eastern Partnership as an indispensable element of Central European connectivity.

On 23 March, EUROPEUM's Brussels office organised the webinar Perceptions of the EU in Central Europe amid COVID-related crisis as a part of the Think Visegrad platform, which brings together 8 think-tanks from Central Europe.

Our research collaborator Zuzana Stuchlíková is a guest of the Visegrad Insight podcast, which discusses the state of Central Europe after the December EU summit and the V4 perspective in connection with the compromise on the rule of law.

Our Danielle Piatkiewicz for the Balkan Insight web commented on how the result of US elections will affect Central Europe politics.

Piotr Maciej Kaczyński authored an EU Monitor on the European Sovereignty in Central Europe Ahead of the Conference on the Future of Europe

The European Union was founded on the principles of freedom, equality and democracy - these are the values within which the rule of law plays an important role. Recently, in relation to the situation in Poland and Hungary, there has been a debate on the extent to which the EU should protect these fundamental values and whether it has the right to comment on them at all.

On 9th of April, the Czech Permanent Representation to the EU in Brussels hosted the roundtable "The future of the EU-UK security relationship seen from Central Europe". The report from the discussion organized by the Brussels office of EUROPEUM Institute for European Policy and the Think Visegrad platform is now available.

Together with the Austrian Society for European Politics, the Center for European Neighborhood Studies at the Central European University Budapest, the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Ljubljana and GLOBSEC Policy Institute in Bratislava we jointly launched a project with the goal to examine why political and societal actors resort to an “anti-European” rhetoric. The final report from the project is now available.

Vladislava Gubalova, as part of the project Think Visegrad, published a policy brief on future of the CEE countries.