Robert Bosch Center for Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia

Obwohl beide Referenten unterschiedlichen politischen Lagern entstammen, war ihr Gespräch überraschend wenig konfrontativ. Am weitesten auseinander lagen Günter Verheugen und Rainer Stinner als es darum ging, die Rolle der Bundesregierung bei der Bewältigung der Euro-Krise zu bewerten. In Bezug auf die EU-Außenpolitik sparten beide Redner nicht an Kritik gegenüber Brüssel, scheuten sich aber auch nicht, die Mitgliedsländer mit klaren Worten an ihre Verpflichtungen zu erinnern.

In a ceremony, Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg and German Bundestag President Norbert Lammert, alongside representatives of the bilateral project, acknowledged the connections between the two countries. Since the German-Czech Declaration was signed in 1997 considerable progress has been made. Members of the younger generation presented their cross-border projects and, in doing so, showed how much headway has been made in promoting relations between the two neighbors.

Turkey’s EU membership would not only be an advantage for Turkey – Brussels, too, would gain, emphasized Turkey’s Minister for European Union Affairs Egemen Bağış at the alumni and interim seminar of the Goerdeler-Kolleg in Istanbul. In addition to EU accession, Turkish foreign policy, administration reform, and development plans for Istanbul’s infrastructure were discussed.