BELGRADE – SERBIA
500+ participants / 80+ panelists / 16+ panels
BSC2024
18-20 NOVEMBER
Day 2
10:00 – 11:00
Europe Surviving and Thriving in the Geopolitical Age
| The rise of multilateralism and the unprecedented upswing of the liberal democratic paradigm throughout most of the 1990s and the early 2000s allowed European leaders to indulge in a complacency, looking at the world through rose-tinted glasses. Neither the events of 9/11 nor the subsequent US-led war on terror changed much in this regard. A first and rather rude awakening occurred in 2008 with the Russia-Georgia war and the global financial and economic crisis – two events that clearly demonstrated that geopolitics and geoeconomics had in fact never disappeared and that the basic political and economic foundations of Europe were considerably more fragile than what was widely believed. The second wake-up call came with the collapse of the previously existing orders in the regional spaces beyond the European southern and eastern borders and the emergence of a multiplicity of conflicts, following the 2011 Arab Uprisings and Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of the war in the Donbas in 2014. Eventually, this series of dramatic events led to a gradual realisation among decision-makers in the EU, UK and wider Europe that a presumptive “ring of friends” had turned into a “ring of fire”, demanding rather swift adjustments to a rapidly changing reality. In February 2022, Putin’s revisionist Russia brought war to the EU’s doorstep. Not only did the re-emergence of war and bloodshed on the European continent leave decision-makers in awe over the future of the European security architecture, but also led to a growing rapprochement between Brussels and London and a deepening understanding of mutual interests and dependencies. It is against this backdrop that this panel aims to critically discuss the role of a changing EU, a changing United Kingdom, and a changing wider Europe in times of war and global turmoil. Among others, it will address key questions such as: Is Europe able to respond to the present regional and global challenges? Can the transatlantic partnership survive another Trump administration? Is it time to seriously conceive of a European security architecture outside of NATO? Can the European Political Community be an answer to at least some of the crucial challenges the European continent is faced with? |