Hungary’s international image has come a long way since the beginning of the migration crisis in 2015. Yet what many thought unlikely two years ago now is reality: there is a growing coalition forming around Hungary, linking the V4 countries and various nationalist/populist forces in European politics. This new coalition, originally formed a propos the immediate policy responses to the ‚migration crisis’, promotes a „Europe of nation states” in opposition to a more federalist Europe championed by Germany and other member states. The proposed conference seeks to retell the origins of this marked shift in the European balance of symbolic power, and investigate how the Visegrad 4 envisions its self-image, as well as the role it can play as a regional bloc in the Europe that is to come.
Program
10:30 Registration
11:00 Opening remarks:
- Péter Balázs – Director, Center for European Neighborhood Studies
- Timo Rinke – Project Manager, "Flight, Migration, Integration in Europe" project, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung
11:10-12:30 Expert Panel: The V4’s self-image as an international actor in the wake of the 2015 ‘migration crisis’
- Balázs Orbán – Director General, Migration Research Institute, Budapest
- Vit Dostal – Research Director, Association of International Affairs, Prague
- Alena Kudzko – Deputy Research Director, GLOBSEC Policy Institute, Bratislava
- Veronika Jóźwiak – Analyst, Polish Institute of International Affairs, Warsaw
Chair: András Szalai, Center for European Neighborhood Studies (CENS)
12:30 Buffet Lunch
The event will be livestreamed here: https://www.youtube.com/ceuhungary/live
Please register by the 27th of October HERE
The language of the conference will be English. No translation will be provided.