On 14th April at Leiden University in the Hague a second Dutch-Polish roundtable on the security of Europe, the EU enlargement and Eastern Partnership took place. The meeting in the Hague was organized by College of Eastern Europe (KEW), the Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations and Leiden University. The roundtables are held within the General Maczek Dialogues format initiated by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Poland together with KEW and Clingendael in November 2024. The event in the Hague was co-funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland.
The roundtable started with the dinner on 13th April evening with keynote speech on the current state of play of the war in Ukraine provided by Julia Soldatiuk-Westerveld, Senior Researcher in Clingendael Institute.
The second day started with welcoming remarks granted by Laurynas Vaičiūnas, president of KEW, Tony van der Togt, Associate Fellow in Clingendael and Leiden University, Margareta Kassangana, Ambassador of Poland to the Netherlands, Monika Lipert-Sowa, Deputy Chief of Mission and Sanne Löwenhardt, Deputy Director Europe from Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The opening discussion concerned whether Europe and the United States will find themselves on the edge of divorce during the second administration of Donald Trump. The speakers in this discussion were Łukasz Pawłowski, Director of the Department of Strategy in Polish MFA and Pieter Smidt van Gelder, Deputy Director of Strategy Department of Dutch MFA. The moderator of the discussion was Adam Reichardt, editor in chief of „New Eastern Europe”.
The discussion during the first panel, titled „The future of European security: Together we stand (divided we fail)” revolved around several important questions, such as what are the current prospects for a ceasefire and negotiations in the Russian-Ukrainian war? How to maintain security in Europe with significantly lesser involvement of the US? Or: how should Europe react to the warming American-Russian relations? The panel involved speeches of Dariusz Kozerawski, Professor at Jagiellonian University, Frans Osinga, Professor of war studies at Leiden University, Bob Deen, Head of Security in Clingendael Institute. The discussion was moderated by Tony van der Togt from Clingendael Institute and the Leiden University.
The second panel, titled „From (A)dratic through (B)lack Sea to (C)aucasus: The future of EU-engargement and the Eastern Partnership” focused on issues related to accession negotiations with candidate countries: the significant opportunities and challenges that the EU is facing regarding Ukraine’s accession, how can the EU ensure democratic election process in Moldova and whether the EU should intervene on the democracy backsliding in Georgia, Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina?. This debate was moderated by Laurynas Vaičiūnas from KEW. The panelists were Marta Szpala, Analyst form Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW), Paweł Chmieliński, Professor of Polish Academy of Science, Antoaneta Dimitrova, Professor of Comparative Governance at Leiden University and Wouter Zweers, Research Fellow from Clingendael Institute.
The last event of the roundtable was the public debate: „Europe, the US and Russia in turbulent times: views from the Polish EU Presidency”. The speakers of the debate were Łukasz Pawłowski from Polish MFA and Adam Balcer, KEW Program Director. The commentary was provided by Maxine David from the Institute of History at Leiden University. The moderator of the debate was Daniel Thomas, professor of international relations at Leiden University.
