Agenda

In addition to the well-known security dimension, years of military strife and state collapse in the Middle East and North Africa have created new economic realities on the ground that are likely to persist in post-conflict phases. They will shape how ongoing conflicts are to end and how “normal life” might resume afterwards. The conference will explore the pathways from war economy dynamics in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and neighbouring countries and will be structured in four thematic panels:

– The dynamics of war economy, the realities they have left on the ground and the actual rules that govern economic transactions and the access to natural resources and infrastructure.
– The political economy of reconstruction and how it may create losers and winners and hence either contribute to peace building or to the creation of new grievances
– The impact of hydrocarbon revenues in oil-rich countries like Iraq and Libya and whether they will ease reconstruction and reconciliation or conversely become an additional bone of contention between rival groups.
– The role that market-oriented and profit-driven private sector actors might play in any future reconstruction (considering also the unlikelihood of massive inter-governmental inflows). To conclude the conference, a roundtable of a selected group of international experts from the worlds of academics, practitioners and mass media will flesh out the main points highlighted during the four panels. The objective of this debate is to encourage connections, comparisons and further perspectives.

More details here.

Contact:

Sarah Katherine St John – Send a mail

Hydrogen – clean energy par excellence – appears more and more as a future energy sector, both in the field of transport and in stationary industrial applications. Today, many cities around the world have harnessed it as one of the most effective ways to manage the problems of urban mobility, passenger transport, or last-mile logistics for goods.

CIFE organises this conference in cooperation with the City of Nice, the AFHYPAC, and the Club de Nice, to reflect on hydrogen-fuelled responses to cities’ transportation and environmental challenges. We wish to involve industrial players in this event, as well as interested local authorities and individual guests.

The conference takes place in French.

Link to programme.

To register.

4th SVOC 'The Role of State in Varieties of Capitalism’ conference – with main focus on ‘Uneven Development, Inequalities and the State’organised by IWE CERS HAS & CEU CENS (Center for European Neighborhood Studies, Central European University).

Deadline for abstract submission: July 31, 2018

More details here

CERS HAS and the Central European University CENS (Center for European Neighborhood Studies, Central European University) 4th SVOC ’The Role of State in Varieties of Capitalism’ conference with the main focus on ‘Uneven Development, Inequalities and the State’.

The main aim of the 4th "The Role of State in Varieties of Capitalism"conference is to contribute to the better understanding of uneven development in three aspects and their interrelations: social, spatial and economic inequalities, furthermore state policies aiming at reducing these inequalities and multi-scalarity.

Link to the event page here.

Save the dates of 29 – 30th November 2018 for the conference on “Moving Sands in Global Politics and European Security: Resilience and Beyond”. Invitation and programme for this year’s Czernin Security Forum will be coming soon. The organizing team from the Institute of International Relations Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences at the Charles University and from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is looking forward to welcoming everyone at the Czernin Palace.

Find more information about it here.

Save the dates 29th – 30th November 2018 for the conference on “Moving Sands in Global Politics and European Security: Resilience and Beyond”. The invitation and programme for this year’s Czernin Security Forum will be coming soon. The organising team from the Institute of International Relations Prague, the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is looking forward to welcoming everyone at the Czernin Palace.

Find more about it here.

The year 2017 was marred by the assassination, in Malta, of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, an event which represented one of the darkest hours for media freedom and media pluralism in the European Union in recent years. In 2018 other journalists on the front line, Jan Kuciak and Viktoria Marinova were murdered in Slovakia and Bulgaria. These crimes have profoundly shaken Europe and have had an impact on its image as a bastion of human rights and democratic values.

Several years of monitoring the state of play of media pluralism and freedom in Europe by the Media Pluralism Monitor (MPM) clearly show that no country is free from risks deriving from political, economic or legal conditions for media and journalism. What is worrisome is that the latest findings show a deterioration in most areas covered by the MPM. In particular, an increase of risk for the area of Basic protection, which covers the very essential conditions for a democratic society, including the safety of journalists and protection of freedom of expression, stands as a call for immediate action.

In addition to the “traditional” sources of risks to media pluralism, contemporary digital environment creates new challenges. Growing importance of a few digital intermediaries and social platforms strongly affect the news business, news distribution and audiences habits. It has opened a Pandora’s box of threats such as spread of online disinformation and hate speech, misuse of personal data for political advertising, non-transparent content moderation, net neutrality violations, etc.

The aim of this event is twofold: first, to present and discuss the latest findings of the Media Pluralism Monitor (MPM 2017); and second to deliberate – with scholars, experts, stakeholders and policy-makers  from different parts of Europe – the digital-related challenges, trying to address possible ways of measuring such risks, as a precondition for acting upon them.

More information here.

15.00-16.30, 12 December 2018. Birojnīca, Dzirnavu street 84 k-2, Riga

 The Latvian Institute of International Affairs, with the support of the US Embassy in Riga, will hold a public discussion “Securing Democracy 2018: Strategic Communication Challenges in Latvia". The discussion will aim to review, among other issues, the means of securing the truth in the post-truth age to secure a common awareness of the meaning of democracy, Latvia’s capacity and outlook in the field of StratCom, and the top challenges for StratCom in 2018.

More information available here

This interactive FSR 1-day training, based on practical information and case studies, will guide you through everything you need to know about EU lobbying.

Gain key insight into the EU lobbying labyrinth while exploring the various principles, process and tools for developing effective strategies to influence the European decision-making processes and its ecosystem.

Learning Objectives