Old and new walls in Europe.
Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Germany 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
November, 11-12 2009
Warsaw, Culture Centre Nowy Wspaniały Świat, ul . Nowy Świat 63
Co-operation: Krytyka Polityczna
The historical breakthrough of 1989 – the Polish Round Table, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall – was realisation of the freedom efforts of the democratic opposition in the socialist block states and the beginning of the fundamental changes in Europe.
For the states of the socialist block – including Poland, Czechoslovakia and the GDR – the overthrow of the communist regime carried the hope for a “coming back to Europe,” recovery of their European identity, freedom, prosperity and democracy. The newly gained civil liberties and rights set the conditions for the citizens to take over responsibility to build democracy. The free market became the leitmotif of the economic transformation in those states and enabled development of individual entrepreneurship.
The political landscape of Europe also changed. In 1991, the Soviet Union fell apart, divided Germany became reunified, while in 1993, Czechoslovakia was peacefully split into two independent countries. In the case of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland, EU accession became a political objective for the majority of the ruling parties and spiritus movens for undertaking of democratic and economic reforms. The enlargements of the EU in 2004 and 2007 are considered to be a dismantling of the cold-war division of Europe.
However, these 20 years of transformations were not only a series of collective and individual successes. The economic reforms were accompanied by corporate bankruptcies, unemployment and maladjustment to the requirements of the free economy, thus drawing new lines of social divisions. Despite multi-billion expenditures for unification of the country, “the new lands” are still lagging behind in German economic statistics. Settlement with a socialist past is a source of divisions – particularly in Poland – between the former democratic opposition and political elites. Women still have to demand equal treatment, both within the area of public and economic life. Intensification of populist, radical leftist and nationalist tendencies is an alarming sign of the deficiencies of democracy and the lack of acceptance of the changes by part of society.
The process of reunification of Europe is neither easy nor complete. 5 years after the EU’s enlargement, we are still talking about “the old” and “the new” Europes rather than a single European identity. Euro-enthusiasm of citizens in the new Member States encounters euro-scepticism among part of the political elites, and fatigue with the current size of the EU on the part of the old 15 Member States. At the same time, the enlargement – the shifting of boundaries of the area of political and economic stability in Europe – did not cover all of the European countries, and the current economic crisis is testing the EU’s solidarity rule, and 20 years after the collapse of the wall, threatens a new division of Europe.
So how does the vision of the “coming back to Europe” compare with reality? What boundaries have disappeared, what social and political divisions are still posing a challenge for Europe, and how should the European Union and Europe look from the perspective of experience with democratic transformation in the next twenty years? These are the central questions of the debate.
The discussion will involve the participation of co-authors and beneficiaries of the transformations – observers and commentators on social life, politicians, representatives of the academic world and NGOs from the former GDR, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland.
The conference will include a presentation of the newest publications of the Heinrich Böll Foundation on transformations of the last 20 years: “Women in Times of Change 1989-2009” and “Twenty Years After - The Post-communist Countries and the European Integration.”
The agenda of the conference and the short CV's of the speakers as a PDF-file.
Introductory lecture Europe and the art of bringing down walls by Prof. Timothy Garton Ash
Speakers:
Aleksander Smolar, Poland
Magdalena Vasaryova, Slovakia
Reinhard Weißhuhn, Germany
Timothy Snyder, USA
Jerzy Osiatyński, Poland
Jan Machacek, Czech Republic
Rita Pawlowski , Germany
Bernard Guetta, France
Chair persons:
Agnieszka Graff and Adam Ostolski
The conference will be held in English, German and Polish with simultaneous translation.