18.03.2010
12:15 - 14:30

The New Eastern Europe: Challenges and Opportunities for the EU

Centre for European Studies (ThinkgEurope)
10, Rue du Commerce
1000 Brussels, Belgium
Email: info@thinkingeurope.eu

Link to the organizer

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European People's Party (EPP)
10, rue Commerce
1000 Brussels
Phone: +32 2 2854140
Fax: +32 2 2854141
Email: info@epp.eu

Link to the organizer
URL of event

Conference / Convention

European Integration, Institutions & Enlargement

Registration required

Hotel Silken Berlaymont
Boulevard Charlemagne 11-19
1000 Brussels

The past two decades have been of fundamental significance for the creation of a Europe ‘Whole and Free’. But of the thirty post-Communist nations that emerged from the collapse of communism, most of the Western Balkans and the former Soviet Union have developed in a way unlike the rest. Indeed, the six states of the ‘Eastern Partnership’, also termed the ‘New Eastern Europe’, remain still only half free, locked in limbo both in terms of their foreign relations and their domestic realities. Oscillating, to different degrees, between democracy and authoritarianism, they all share a fundamental security problem.

They are the primary target of Russia’s plans to divide the continent into ‘spheres of influence’, yet they strive to maintain their independence. Despite sharing a common European identity, the prospect of membership of the EU or NATO is all but absent in the medium term for these states. Therefore, Europe should treat these countries as sovereign subjects, and strongly support their right to equal security and to choose their own alliances.

Tomi Huhtanen, CES - Director; Svante Cornell, Institute for Security and Development Policy in Stockholm - Research Director and CES - Research Associate; Elmar Brok, Member - European Parliament, Group of the EPP; Fraser Cameron, Director - EU-Russia Centre, Brussels; Roland Freudenstein, Head of Research - CES.