On Tuesday, May 21, 2019, we held a new session in our event series titled “Dialogues on Open Societies” in Madrid, with this conference.
Taking part were Gerald Knaus, founder of the European Stability Initiative, and Kristina Kausch, a senior researcher for the German Marshall Fund. Moderated by: Eduard Soler i Lecha, a senior researcher at the CIDOB.
The rivalries between regional powers have been shifting and changing since the 2011 uprisings. Alliances are becoming increasingly volatile and inconsistent, in terms of both state and non-state role-players. In order to understand the way these conflicts are being redefined, as well as seeking out paths for cooperation in the Mediterranean, it is essential that we examine internal, regional and global dynamics. This analysis will take a look at a few specific cases and the way in which the EU has reacted to crises, above all in fields like migration and security. Similarly, there will be a discussion of United States’ role in the region and the way in which geopolitical borders have grown blurrier, involving neighboring regions like the Sahel, the Horn of Africa and the Balkans, as well.
Gerald Knaus is the founder of the European Stability Initiative, a think-tank with offices in Berlin, Brussels and Vienna, which does work on southeastern Europe, the Caucuses, European expansion the future of the EU. Kraus studied at the Universities of Oxford, Brussels and Bologna, and has taught Economics at the University of Chernivtsi in Ukraine, as well as working for five years at NGOs and international entities in Bulgaria and Bosnia-Herzegovina. From 2001 to 2004, he worked at the UN Mission in Kosovo. He was a founding member of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and is a specialist on state-building processes and intervention.
Kristina Kausch joined the German Marshall Fund in Brussels in 2016. Ms. Kausch’s research focuses on Europe’s political relations with the Middle East and North Africa, political transformations in the Arab world and geopolitical trends in the Middle East. Prior to that, she worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, directed the Middle East Program at FRIDE, and was an expert at the German cooperation agency GIZ. She has had three books published on the region, as well as articles in both academic journals and the written press (The Guardian, El País, Middle East Eye and Süddeutsche Zeitung).
Eduard Soler i Lecha is a senior researcher at CIDOB and the scientific coordinator of MENARA, a European project on geopolitical changes in the Middle East and North Africa. He is a political scientist and has a PhD in International Relations from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. His fields of work include: Euro-Mediterranean relations, Turkey’s foreign and domestic policy, political change in North Africa and the Middle East, Spain’s Mediterranean policy and cooperation in the field of security in the Mediterranean.
[Photo: Maso Notarianni]
More info: http://en.casaarabe.es/event/%E2%80%9Cdialogues-on-open-societies%E2%80%9D-series-of-conferences#14545
