The invasion of Ukraine, the preparations for the post-war reconstruction, as well as the (re)launching of integration processes in the Eastern periphery of Europe and in the Western Balkans put the relationship between intra-EU processes of reforming integration and geopolitics in a sharp focus. Is an unreformed EU ready and capable to pursue simultaneously geopolitical goals and integrate fledgling democracies, with weak states and economies? Can the EU promote and maintain democracy and rule of law beyond its present borders if it is weak in managing such problems internally? Can it help to set lesser developed economies on sustainable developmental path if the policies it uses inside the EU have widened developmental gaps and put several economies in member states on developmental paths with questionable sustainability?
The workshop brings together scholars, policy-makers and representatives of think-tanks to discuss these issues. Whereas during the Eastern enlargement it was feared that widening of the EU might undermine processes of the deepening of integration, today this attitude may have changed, and one can argue that widening of integration and the establishment of EU’s geopolitical strength presupposes intra-EU deepening of integration.
Registration is required to enter the European Parliament’s building. If you would like to attend the event, please register here.
DEADLINE: June 4, 2023, 11:59pm
PROGRAM
9:00 Welcome by Renata Uitz, CEU Democracy Institute Co-Director
9:05 – 9:15 Opening speech by H.E. Vsevolod Chentsov, Head of the Mission of Ukraine to the EU
9:15 – 10:40 Roundtable: The effects of enlargement: democracy and development?
Analysts and leaders agree that integration among states at different levels of development might distribute gains and costs, vulnerabilities and opportunities unevenly and might even produce economic and political outcomes that could destabilise integration. What aspects of EU governance might need to be reformed to increase the probability that the integration of Ukraine will yield stable democratic rule and broad-based economic development? Does the EU have the capacity to manage even higher levels of heterogeneity in economic and political development? What kinds of institutional changes could increase such EU level capacities?
Participants:
- Prof. László Bruszt (Co-Director, CEU Democracy Institute)
- Prof. Danuta Huebner (MEP, former Commissioner for Regional Policy, former President of AFCO in the EP)
- Karel Lanoo (CEPS Director)
- Hennadiy Maksak (Director, Ukrainian Prism)
Moderator:
- Prof. Vera Scepanovic (Leiden University)
10:40 - 11:00 Coffee break
11:00 - 11:30 Speech by Prof. Timofiy Mylovanov (President of Kyiv School of Economics, former Minister of Economic Development)
11:30 – 13:00 Roundtable: Preparing the EU to integrate Ukraine
Despite the ongoing war, the Ukrainian government and Parliament are working to fulfil the conditions that will allow negotiations to begin. However, for the enlargement process to succeed, the European Union must also be ready for it, both institutionally and in terms of formulating conditions and forming support for Ukraine. What are and what should be the steps to prepare EU for launching the process of integration of post-war Ukraine?
Panelists:
- Prof. Heather Grabbe, (Senior Advisor, Open Society Foundations, and Europe’s Futures Fellow, Institute for Human Sciences)
- Prof. Dimitry Kochenov (CEU Democracy Institute)
- Prof. Timofiy Mylovanov (President of Kyiv School of Economics, former Minister of Economic Development)
- Peter Polajnar (Ukraine Service, European Commission)
Moderator:
- Ken Godfrey (European Democracy Hub)
13:00– 13:15 Coffee break
13:15– 14:45 Roundtable: Democracy and Geopolitical Enlargement
Many leaders and analysts insist that the invasion of ‘Ukraine has given birth to a ‘geopolitical EU’ and that the accession process with Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia needs to be pursued in a more strategic way than the rather technocratic processes of previous enlargements. So, what is needed to make the new process of accession with these countries more geopolitical? What impact will enlargement have on the EU’s geopolitical identity? How does the methodology of enlargement need to change? And what is needed to spur more effective European support for democratic change in the candidate countries?
Participants:
- Jerzy Pomianowski (Director of the European Endowment of Democracy)
- Ramunas Stanionis (European Parliament, United4Ukraine Network)
- Victoria Vdovychenko (The Foreign Policy Council “Ukrainian Prism”)
Moderator:
- Michał Matlak (European Parliament, Review of Democracy)
14:45 The end of the event
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
László Bruszt is Professor of Sociology at the Central European University (Vienna) and Co-director of the CEU Democracy Institute (Budapest). He started to teach at CEU in 1992 and has served as its Acting Rector and President in 1996/97. Between 2004 and 2016 he was teaching at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. His publications focus on issues of regime change and economic transformation. He co-authored with David Stark the award winning Postsocialist Pathways (Cambridge UP) and co-edited with Gerald McDermott the Leveling the Playing Field:Transnational Regulatory Integration and Development (Oxford UP). His more recent studies deal with the politics of economic integration of the Eastern and Southern peripheries of Europe. Besides co-editing two recent special issues at Review of International Political Economy and Studies in Comparative International Development, his works appear in the Journal of European Public Policy, Journal of Institutional Economics and West European Politics.
Ken Godfrey is the Executive Director of the European Partnership for Democracy (EPD). Before being appointed as Executive Director, Ken worked as a Programmer Manager for EPD, contributing to the success of several democracy assistance projects in Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine and Zimbabwe, as well as the PASC project in Tunisia that supports civil society through a network of 6 local offices and 30 field staff. Prior to joining EPD, Ken worked as an Electoral Advisor for the UN Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste providing electoral assistance for three national elections. Ken has worked for the EU, as a Procurement Officer for the European Union Police Mission in Afghanistan, at the European Parliament and as an external consultant for the European Commission. He graduated from the London School of Economics with a Master’s Degree in Comparative Democratization, focusing research on the links between climate change and representative democracy. Ken has worked professionally in Argentina, Belgium, Canada, China, Senegal, Timor-Leste and the United Kingdom. He is fluent in English, French and Spanish.
Heather Grabbe is Senior Advisor to the President of the Open Society Foundations, a Europe’s Futures Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences (Vienna), and Visiting Professor at University College London. She is a political scientist and advocate for democratic pluralism and open societies, and was ranked highly among “the women who shape Brussels” by Politico while Director of the Open Society European Policy Institute. From 2004 to 2009 she was senior advisor to then European Commissioner for Enlargement Olli Rehn, responsible for EU policy on the Balkans and Turkey. Previously, she was deputy director of the Centre for European Reform, where she wrote extensively on EU external policies and enlargement. She also conducted academic research at the European University Institute (Florence), Chatham House (London), Oxford and Birmingham universities, and taught at the London School of Economics.
Danuta Huebner is a Member of the European Parliament. She works in the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and the Committee on International Trade. She is also a member of the Delegation for Relations with the US. Previously, she has served as European Commissioner for Regional Policy from 2004 to 2009. Prior to this, she was the chief negotiator of Poland's membership in OECD, and Executive Secretary of the European Economic Commission with the rank of Deputy Secretary General The United Nations. In Poland she had lead the Office of the Committee for European Integration. She was also the Minister of European Affairs, responsible for the process of Poland's accession to the European Union. She is author of many publications on economic activity research and development.
Dimitry Kochenov is lead researcher of the Rule of Las Workgroup at the CEU Democracy Institute, and teaches at the Department of Legal Studies in Vienna. He is the author of Citizenship (MIT Press, 2019), and of EU Rule of Law Casebook (with L. Pech, SIEPS, 2021). He edited a number of volumes on EU Rule of Law and other aspects of European Integration, including five for Cambridge and one for Oxford University Press. His Quality of Nationality Index (with J. Lindeboom, Bloomsbury, 2020) was featured in The Economist, Forbes and FT. He is on the editorial boards, inter alia, of the Oxford Encyclopaedia of EU Law and Hague Journal of the Rule of Law. He taught at Princeton, Oxford, Rome, Osaka, UNAM, Groningen etc., and served as the founding chairman of Investment Migration Council (Geneva). He consults governments and international organizations.
Karel Lanoo is Chief Executive Officer of Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) since 2000, managing a staff of about 70 persons, and debating European and global policy issues all the time. Karel was an Independent Director of BME (Bolsas y Mercados Españolas), and is a member of foundation boards and advisory councils. He has published several books on capital markets, MiFID, and the financial crisis, the most recent of which is The Great Financial Plumbing, From Northern Rock to Banking Union. He is also the author of many op-eds and articles published by CEPS or in international newspapers and reviews, and is a regular speaker in hearings for national and international institutions (the European Commission, European Parliament, etc.) and at international conferences and executive learning courses.
Hennadiy Maksak is one of the founders and executive director of the Ukrainian think-tank “Foreign Policy Council “Ukrainian Prism”. Founded in 2015 Ukrainian Prism is a leading non-governmental research and advocacy institution in field of foreign policy of Ukraine and international security. Maksak is also a part of the Ukraine and Eastern Europe Programme at GLOBSEC Policy Institute in Bratislava, Slovakia. In 2016-2019 he was a Coordinator of the Ukrainian national platform of the EaP Civil Society Forum. In 2012-2014, 2017-2019 was a member of Steering Committee of the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum. In 2017-2020 was chairing the Civic Council under the Ministry on Foreign Affairs. Took part in task forces for drafting the Foreign Policy Strategy of Ukraine (2021), Public Diplomacy Strategy (2021). In 2021 coordinated activity of the initiative group for creation of the Crimean Platform Expert Network. Studied economics (Chernihiv State Institute for Economics and Management), political sciences (Warsaw University, Center for East European Studies). Fields of expertise: International relations and foreign policy of Ukraine, security in the Eastern Europe, Eastern partnership policy, European and Euro-Atlantic integration of Ukraine, diplomatic service, expert diplomacy, economic diplomacy.
Michał Matlak is managing editor of the Review of Democracy. He holds a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence. He was a visiting scholar at the Princeton University, Hertie School of Governance in Berlin and the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna (Józef Tischner Fellow). He works at the European Parliament as a policy advisor. His main research interests are: the institutional design of the European Union, EU Enlargement, religion and politics.
Timofiy Mylovanov is President of the Kyiv School of Economics. During his professional career, he has been teaching for a long time at the European and American universities, including Rheinische Friedrich–Wilhelms–Universität Bonn, University of Pennsylvania and University of Pittsburgh. His research interests cover theory of games and contracts, institutional design. His articles on these topics have been published in leading international academic magazines, including Econometrica, American Economic Review, the Review of Economic Studies. Between 2016 and 2019 he was Deputy Chairman of the Board of the National Bank of Ukraine. In 2019-20 he served as Minister of Economic Development, Trade and Agriculture.
Peter Polajnar is Deputy Head of Unit in the Ukraine Service in DG NEAR. He has longstanding experience working with enlargement countries, in particular on issues of economic policy and structural reforms. This included assessment of the economic accession criteria, as well as promotion of trade integration in the Western Balkans through CEFTA. He also worked for five years on Serbia's accession negotiations.
Jerzy Pomianowski is Executive Director of the European Endowment of Democracy. He has worked in international affairs for almost 30 years as Deputy Foreign Minister of Poland, Director of OECD-UNDP’s Partnership for Democratic Governance and Poland’s Ambassador to Japan. In 2013, he led the establishment of the European Endowment for Democracy (EED) and has since served as its Executive Director. He began his career as a civil servant in 1990, just after the fall of communism, first in the Ministry of Education, and then in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He oversaw the launch of Poland Aid (2006-2008) and served as Director General of the Polish Foreign Service (2005-2006). Before 1989, he was an active member of the democratic opposition in Poland. He was Chief-Editor of the Independent Publishing House at the Warsaw University, his Alma Mater.
Vera Scepanovic is a Lecturer in International Relations and European Studies at Leiden University. She was previously a post-doctoral Max Weber Fellow at European University Institute in Florence and a visiting lecturer at the Central European University. She has a PhD in Political Economy from the CEU, and is a member of the editorial board of Transfer: European Review of Labor and Research. Her research focuses on the institutional implications of dependent development, and the role of the European Union as a development agent, both in its member states and in third countries.
Ramūnas Stanionis is a policy advisor to MEP Andrius Kubilius, focusing on EU foreign
policy for the Eastern Partnership region and Russia. His primary areas of expertise include the EU enlargement policy for the Associated Trio countries and the democratic transition in Russia and Belarus. He began his diplomatic career in 1999 at Lithuania's EU Accession Negotiations Task Force. From 2003, he served as an advisor on EU integration policy at the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Between 2006 and 2010, he was Antici counsellor on COREPER II matters at Lithuania's Permanent Representation to the EU. In 2011-2012, he took on the role of leading the Department for Policy Analysis and Reforms at the Prime Minister's Office. From 2013 to 2016, he served as a managing partner at Estep Consultancy, specialising in national and EU public policy. Between 2016 and 2019, he worked as an advisor at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Lithuania, focusing on the Eastern Partnership countries, particularly the EU-associated Trio of Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia. He has authored numerous publications on Lithuania's EU accession and EU policy challenges in our immediate neighbourhood.
Renáta Uitz is professor of comparative constitutional law at the Department of Legal Studies and co-director of the CEU Democracy Institute. Her major research interests lie in transition to and from democracy, the protection of individual autonomy and religious liberty. Her current work focuses on illiberal constitutional practices and the normalization of illiberal constitutionalism. She is a co-PI in the Jean Monnet Network BRIDGE. As a co-PI in the multidisciplinary research network investigating the origins and iterations of illiberal constitutionalism in East Central Europe, funded by the Volkswagen Stiftung (2021-25), her work traces the emergence of illiberal Christian democracy. Her book publications include Routledge Handbook of Illiberalism (co-edited with András Sajó and Stephen Holmes (Routledge 2021)) and The Constitution of Freedom: An Introduction to Legal Constitutionalism(OUP 2017).
Victoria Vdovychenko has an MSc and PhD in Foreign Policy and World History, Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine. She works on the challenges of the European Union, Euro-Atlantic integration, hybrid warfare, strategic communication, collaborating with such educational institutions as University of Bologna, George C. Marshall Center for Security Studies, KU Leuven, University Catholic Louvain and Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University. She was a Team Lead for the Assistance Advisory Team working with VPM on European and Euro-Atlantic Integration on the future of ANP Ukraine-NATO as well as on the system of LI&LL from the resilience of Ukraine. She is one of the key experts on Italy’s foreign policy in Ukraine and Associate Expert for Foreign Policy Council “Ukrainian Prism”. She headed a research team to analyze the pandemic challenges on the political narratives in Western and Central Europe, publishing two research papers “Pandenomics of Europe” and “COVID-19 Pandemics in the EU countries”. She is a co-author of policy papers “Ukraine under Zelenskyy: Domestic, Foreign and Security Policy in Flux” (2022), “Willingness to fight for Ukraine: Lessons for the Baltic states” (2022), “Resilience Paper Review” (2022) and “Shaping up social resistance: Zelenskyy’s approach to rearranging Ukraine” (2023). Currently, she is involved in analyzing Zelenskyy’s speeches towards international parliaments and governments in 2022, in project that is a joint cooperation between Aston University (UK), Catholic University of Louvain (UCL, Belgium), Tallinn Technological University as well as Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University.