You have very capable and dynamic young people joining parties on both ends of the spectrum. It means that the younger generation will not only be more open and green than the previous ones, but also more polarized—says Michal Šimečka in an interview with Jakub Dymek. Jakub Dymek: Do you feel confident about the future…

With the world accelerating toward a new digital future, public libraries are becoming more important than ever. In an interview with Anna Zamejc, American librarian Tammy Westergard explains how libraries can foster the culture of lifelong learning and help people level up their skills.

“Writing a biography is not a job for a person who wants to be a saint,” Artur Domosławski writes in his book, quoting a friend. One might add that a saintly hero is poor material for a biographer. 

The strongest vector shaping post-pandemic reality in Europe and the United States will be green modernization. Many years of investment in new energy sources, batteries, information technology to enable coordination, and finally the development of ICT networks are finally beginning to make a systemic impact. 

There seems to be a connection between those who protested against the influx of migrants into Germany a few years ago and people protesting the governmental anti-Covid measures. Both topics seem to be existential in nature, says German political scientist Eckhard Jesse in an interview with Robert Schuster. There were massive protests in Germany last…

What the best of Central Europe's emerging top politicians have in common? That evening in mid-March 2019 the Old Market Place Hall in Bratislava was filled with joy and expectation. The campaign team of the presidential candidate Zuzana Čaputová picked this venue to celebrate an election victory that had seemed almost inconceivable a few weeks…

“If you compare Polish textbooks with Czech Hungarian ones, I suspect that ours are no more nationalistic than theirs,” says Adam Leszczyński in an interview with Zbigniew Rokita. ZBIGNIEW ROKITA: Peasants made up seven or eight tenths of the population of the Polish Republic for nine tenths of its existence, as I learned from your…

The main declared objective of the EU cohesion policy since 2004 has been the reduction of social, economic and regional differences. But how successful has it been? “If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed, if in terms of ten years, plant trees, if in terms of 100 years, teach the people.”…

Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment, Larry Wolff, Stanford University Press, 1994; Wynalezienie Europy Wschodniej. Mapa cywilizacji w dobie Oświecenia, Larry Wolff, translated by Tomasz Bieroń, International Cultural Centre, 2020; Woodrow Wilson and the Reimagining of Eastern Europe, Larry Wolff, Princeton University Press 2020. Over his more than 30-year-long academic career,…

Kult-Kanzler Kreisky. Mensch und Mythos, ueberreuter, Christoph Kotanko, 2021, 196p., ISBN: 9783800077465 In recent years, every time people have looked back at the ‘good old days’, their recollections have been tinged with nostalgia for the 1970s. This was a period when Austria was, for the first time, generally seen to have taken first significant steps…

Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger and the Decade that Reinvented Philosophy Wolfram Eilenberger, Penguin Press, 418 pp. As he crossed the border into neutral Spain and caught a glimpse of Portbou’s crescent shaped beach, Walter Benjamin thought, for just a minute, that he might really escape the Nazis and find his way to the…

The conservative government did not want to leave the EU just for show. They wanted to leave to join what we call the race to the bottom: in environmental standards, labor standards and food standards. All signs show that this is what Johnson is going to do, says Paul Mason in an interview with Jakub…

Romania and Moldova, despite historical, cultural and social ties, are currently two distant worlds. But in both countries there is an ongoing dispute on the understanding of dignity, which has become a key category in European politics. George Simon arrived at the Romanian-Moldovan border on the Prut River on 15 March 2021. He was on…

It appears that the experience and distinctive cultural attributes of Central Europe are inconsistent with the West’s image of what a European should look like. Often when I encounter the West European media’s discussion about the nations of the Visegrád Group, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that they regard these nations as not…

Merkel’s continent-wide popularity over the past five years was based partly on a general belief that she had steered Europe out of the Euro crisis, partly on a left-liberal enthusiasm for her migration policies, and partly on a sense that she represented an oasis of stability at a time of acute global populist challenges. More…

Biden’s ideas may prove flawed, but they are coherent. And the fact that his administration does not build a wall between foreign and domestic policy is an asset not a liability. 16 minutes. That is how long it took China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechim to vent his grievances against American foreign policy, the country’s global…

We overplay Russia's strengths and at the same time misunderstand its motivations. If we believe that Putin doesn't want anything, but to stab us and watch us bleed, we fail to see the real perspective of what the Russians are about – says Mark Galeotti in an interview with Jakub Dymek. Jakub Dymek: “We need…

“The inferiority complex is killing us. We should realize how much we have to offer and systematically present the story of our common experiences, and these experiences in Central Europe were diametrically opposed to those in Western Europe,” says Alicja Knast in an interview with Zbigniew Rokita. ZBIGNIEW ROKITA: You have recently become director of…