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Lennart Meri Conference 2016 kicks off in Tallinn

BC, Tallinn, 13.05.2016.Print version
Lennart Meri Conference 2016, entitled "Shaping the New Normal" and focusing on the future of Europe and NATO, will start in the Estonian capital Tallinn on May 13th, informs LETA/BNS.

The 10th edition of the event will bring to the Estonian capital Tallinn top politicians and outstanding political thinkers from across the world.

 

President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the patron of the conference, will participate in the opening panel "New Normal: The End of the West as We Know It?" together with First Vice President of the European Commission Frans Timmermans and the French secretary of state for European affairs, Harlem Desir.

 

Against the bleak backdrop of current affairs, key policy makers and analysts will among other topics address the refugee crisis that is not only tearing apart the European Union but also the governments of EU member states. Universal liberal values that are the cornerstone of western democracies have all of a sudden acquired a price tag, which not all governments are ready to pay. How to combat the reasons for mass migration and secure Europe's borders? How to help border countries to cope with the influx of refugees and share the burden among receiving countries? These questions require both sense and sensibility from the panel in which Frans Timmermans, Foreign Minister of Estonia Marina Kaljurand, Foreign Minister of Macedonia Nikola Poposki and President of the German Association for East European Studies Ruprecht Polenz will participate.

 

While the Wales summit shifted NATO's focus back to territorial defense, now Warsaw must decide the practicalities. Frontline states want a substantial forward presence, providing reassurance, deterrence and military capability in the event of a Russian attack. Yet others believe this contravenes the spirit of NATO-Russia Founding Act. Swedish Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist, NATO Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow, Defense Policy Director at the French Ministry of Defense Philippe Errera  and Poland's Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski will head the discussion on what trade-offs will face NATO decision-makers as they try to reconcile these conflicting views.

 

Radoslaw Sikorski, senior fellow at Harvard University and former foreign minister of Poland, will join the discussion on the future of Europe with Andrey Kortunov, head of the Russian International Affairs Council, Ivan Krastev, chairman of the Center for Liberal Strategies and Riina Kionka, foreign policy advisor to European Council President Donald Tusk.

 

The McCain Institute will bring a whole panel from the United States to discuss the U.S. presidential elections with Ian Brzezinski  and Daniel Vajdich,  both senior fellows at the Atlantic Council, Sally Painter, co-founder and COO of Blue Star Strategies and Leigh O'Neill,  policy director at the Truman National Security Project, to be moderated by Kurt Volker, executive director of the McCain Institute.

 

On the eve of the opening day, a pre-conference panel was held in the border city Narva in cooperation with the Narva College of the University of Tartu. Since the Russian aggression in Crimea the question has been on the minds of researchers, journalists and policy makers alike: how would the Russian diaspora in the bordering EU countries respond to a possible aggression? The session in Narva seeks to find some answers to this question in a face-to-face with locals. Participating in the discussion will be head of the Narva College Kristina Kallas, Narva resident Maria Ossipovskaja, Atlantic Council analyst Ben Nimmo and Andrei Piontkovsky, visiting fellow at Hudson Institute. The panel will be moderated by Jill Dougherty, former chief of CNN's Moscow bureau.

 

The conference will begin at 5 p.m. Friday, May 13, at Radisson Blu Sky Hotel in Tallinn, and last until Sunday. The discussions will be streamed live on the website of the event and Postimees online.






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