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ABOUT THE FORUM

Building resilience both in Europe and in its neighbourhood and the broader “arc of instability“ that surrounds it have been a cornerstone of NATO and EU policy. The conference took stock of these efforts in both the Eastern and the Southern neighbourhood while benefiting from the burgeoning academic debates on the issue. It situated those efforts in a global perspective, facilitating a discussion about European security in the conditions of global power shifts, which are both horizontal and vertical in nature; the debate critically interrogated the conditions of success of European strategic autonomy, but also the political objectives governing how the capacities of NATO and the EU member states should be both developed and deployed around the world. At the same time, it turned the particiants‘ attention to the rationality of resilience at home and specifically the linkage of resilience and “hybrid threats“ while discussing the very concept of hybridity and its political effects.

The event, organised by the Institute of International Relations Prague and supported by the NATO Public Diplomacy Division, the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Prag, Charles University and the Embassy of Finland, combined political and academic components. Therefore, it was a forum for a mutually enriching dialogue between the world of practical policy making and (international) academia. An expert workshop on deterrence with a food for thought paper prepared by the IIR served as a format for an open discussion of more sensitive issues related to the topic of the conference.

PROGRAMME

The programme is avaliable here.

SPEAKERS

The speakers profiles are available here.

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Dimitar Bechev is Adjunct Professor at the University of Sofia where he teaches European Studies and International Relations. He is also affiliated with the European Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom. Previously, he headed the Sofia office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, where he had been a Senior Policy Fellow. Bechev has written extensively on the politics and history of modern Turkey and the Balkans, EU external affairs and Russian foreign policy. He is a frequent contributor to Al Jazeera, CNN, Foreign Policy and openDemocracy. Bechev received his D.Phil. in International Relations from Oxford University in 2005.

At CES, Bechev will investigate how Russia’s foreign policy and the EU’s enlargement policy are impacting the energy sector in Southeast Europe, specifically Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece and Romania.