2006 Regional Policy Symposium: EU and NATO Member States and Their Eastern Borderlands

On March 30 – April 2, 2006, IREX, in collaboration with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (WWC) [28], hosted the 2006 Regional Policy Symposium at the Chesapeake Beach Hotel and Spa. The Symposium, “EU and NATO Member States and their Eastern Borderlands,” provided senior and junior scholars, as well as members from the policy community, with the opportunity to come together to discuss a variety of political, security, economic, historical, educational, and cultural topics related to the relationships between the countries of the European Union (EU), North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and those countries along their Eastern borders and the Former Soviet Union. Countries include: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine.

Symposium participants included eleven junior scholars, five senior scholars, and members of IREX and WWC staff. Junior scholars were invited to apply for grants to present research papers at this three-day symposium, receive feedback from participating senior scholars and colleagues, and engage in US policy development discussions. Junior scholars were chosen based upon a national competition in which they were required to demonstrate a commitment to continued study, research, and work on the countries of the former Soviet Union and their relations with member countries of NATO and the EU. The event provided participants with the opportunity receive feedback from participating senior scholars and engage in US policy development discussions.

The three-day event commenced with a dinner at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for scholars in Washington, DC, on March 30, 2006. IREX President Mark Pomar gave welcoming remarks and spoke briefly about the importance of Title VIII programs. Welcoming remarks were followed by a keynote address by Haral Guenther, Deputy Chief of Mission, Austrian Embassy. Guenther discussed enlargement prospects as well as security and economic priorities for the EU with regard to its Eastern neighbors, including Russia. The dinner provided scholars with the opportunity to network with one another prior to departing that evening for the hotel to begin two full days of sessions and presentations.

All sessions took place on March 31 and April 1, 2006. During this time, each junior scholar delivered a 20 minute presentation on their research, followed by 40 minutes of discussion which was led and moderated by one of the five senior scholars at the event.

The five SENIOR SCHOLAR PARTICIPANTS [29] in the symposium included:

David Armitage, Principal Analyst for European Union Affairs in the Office of Analysis for Europe at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research and Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at the National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies (NDU/INSS).

Sir Rodric Braithwaite, Honorary Fellow at Christ's College Cambridge, Honorary Doctor and Professor at Birmingham University, Chairman of the Moscow School of Political Studies, and Chairman of the Russia Programme of the Centre for European Reform.

Janusz Bugajski, Director of the New European Democracies Project and Senior Fellow in the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Robert Donnorummo, Associate Director of the Center for Russian & East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.

David Kideckel, Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Central Connecticut State University.

Read more about the JUNIOR SCHOLAR PARTICIPANTS here [30].
Sessions included:

1. Externalization of Political Change: Executives and Foreign Economic Policy in Post-Soviet States
2. On Europe's Edge: New and Old Borders in Central and Eastern Europe
3. Russian Language Speaking Minorities in Latvia and Estonia and their Impact on EU's Relationship with Russia
4. A Decade Later: Strengthening Post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina
5. Understanding the Decline of Nationalism in Russia
6. Trade and Migration in an Enlarged European Union: A Spatial Analysis
7. The Helsinki Convention and Water Resources Planning in the Northeastern Baltic Sea: From ‘Compliance without Implementation’ to Systems of Implementation Review (SIR)
8. EU Accession Demands and Mental Health Reform in Romania
9. Transnational Networks for Minority Rights in Europe: The Case of the Roma
10. Equal Opportunities and East-West Differences: Gender Policies and Politics in the European Union's Eastward Expansion
11. Fostering Democratic Citizenship through Curriculum Development: Teaching the Holocaust in Latvian Schools

In order to ensure that there a wide range of perspectives and fields were represented at the Symposium, Ambassador Avis Bohlen, Former US Ambassador to Bulgaria, was invited to lead a general discussion on “NATO, Security, and Foreign Policy.”

Read more about the SPEAKERS [31]here.

Download the AGENDA [32] here.