On May 12–13, a delegation from Razumkov Centre took part in the conference "Future EU enlargement: building a stronger and more secure Europe" in Brussels, which was organized by the Trans-European Political Studies Association (TEPSA).
The conference was held within the framework of the InvigoratEU project, implemented by a consortium of think tanks — TEPSA members (including Razumkov Centre) and funded by the European Union.
On the first day of the conference, workshops were held only for members of the consortium on the development of a resilience toolkit for the political community, civic education and civil society.
The second day was also open to experts and was full of panel discussions, devoted to various topics related to the future EU enlargement, including the security and defence dimension, social cohesion and economic convergence, interconnectedness, democracy, etc.
One of them — "Security and Defence Dimension of European Resilience: Bridging the Gap between Expectations and Capabilities" — featured one of the panellists, Oleksiy Melnyk, Co-Director of Foreign Policy and International Security Programmes at Razumkov Centre.
All panellists agreed that in an era when the world order is radically changing, hostile states such as Russia continue to pose existential military and hybrid threats to European countries, long-standing allies such as the United States are turning away from Europe, and new states such as China are reorienting their posture, the European Union’s need for resilience is growing immensely.
The EU enlargement at the expense of candidate countries, including Ukraine, is a crucial tool for asserting Europe’s geopolitical position.
How can the EU energize its enlargement and neighbourhood policies to enhance Europe’s resilience? This is the fundamental question that the members of the InvigoratEU consortium are seeking to answer.
