Event Description

On behalf of the partnership of History of Optimism we kindly invite you to the conference: “Civil society in turbulent times – New solutions in the EU inspired by the lessons from the past”. It takes place on November 24th from 14:00-17:00 online.

History of optimism?

In the times of the fall of communism in Central-Eastern Europe in 1989, marked by the Round Table peaceful opposition and government talks in Poland and the fall of the Berlin wall, a wave of optimism swept through Europe as democracy took is stronghold and civil society showed its strength in our corner of the world. This led to the admission of several former Communist bloc countries to the European Union in 2004 and 2007. But in the last decade the rights many of us took for granted has slowly and sometimes brutally been eroded to a point where parts of EU are considered to be no longer able to comply with a number of the rule of law requirements. In result,

they cannot be said to live up to the democratic values of the Union.

The Covid-19 crisis has only enhanced said crisis with reports of suppressions and harassment of civil society agents and activists in several countries in the EU. Moreover, countries like Poland or Hungary are further being criticized by the EU institutions for trying to control and intimidate the judicial system, but continuously ignore this critic from the international community.

The conference

The conference is part of a series of initiatives with the aim to mobilize established civil society in the fight against current challenges. During this conferences the partners of the “History of Optimism” project invites scholars, CSO’s, decision-makers and representatives of the EU institutions to partake in a dialog in three segments: Lessons learnt on the democratic transformation and civic engagement in Central-Eastern Europe (CEE); A current assessment of the state of rule of law and democracy in Europe; and finally a debate on how to support civil society as democracy champions going forward with Rule of Law initiatives.

We hope this event will meet with your interest. Please contact us for more information.

Filip Pazderski, Head of the Democracy and Civil Society Programme at Institute of Public Affairs - filip.pazderski@isp.org.pl

Julie Rosenkilde, Director of Nyt Europa – jr@nyteuropa.dk