In a wide ranging conversation that aims to provide a strategic overview of the former Soviet Union as its constituent countries reconfigure their relationships with each other, with the Russian government and with the rest of the world - Ivan Vejvoda and Thomas de Waal reckon with the complex dynamics of power and shifting influences a year on from the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. From the EU facing societies of Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine to the central Asian countries with...

In this conversation, Ivan Vejvoda talks to Carnegie Europe visiting scholar and COP26 attendee Olivia Lazard about the European Green Deal - the series of policy initiatives described by Ursula Von Der Leyen as Europe's 'man-on-the-moon moment'. While decarbonisation is unquestionably desirable and necessary should we think of 'the environment' as including the geopolitical, and social environments actually experienced by people in their daily lives? How do we reach the goal of net zero...

The Conference on the Future of Europe - a multi-year consultation that aims to set an agenda for the reform of EU policies and institutions in the medium to long term by inviting participation from EU citizens and civil society - is ongoing following the launch of its digital platform in April 2021. Does the conference represent a new frontier in deliberative democracy or does it give undue prominence to the preoccupations and divisive rhetoric of outlier political movements that do not...

This week Ivan Vejvoda is in conversation with the director of the Asia programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations Janka Oertel. Against a backdrop of rising global temperatures and the pledges made at the COP 26 summit in Glasgow last year, Oertel and Vejvoda consider the pivotal role that China will play in determining whether humanity can achieve its stated aim and keep warming below 1.5 degrees. Conventional wisdom sees the rise in emissions that has accompanied China's...

In this episode Ivan Vejvoda speaks with award-winning international correspondent and Europe's Futures fellow Amanda Coakley about the rollback of women's reproductive rights in Central Europe following abortion's effective outlawing in Poland when a judgement of the country's constitutional tribunal came in to force in January 2021 limiting abortion to cases where the pregnancy was the result of a criminal act or where the life of the mother was at risk. Here they ask why some countries...

Zoran Nechev heads the Center for EU integration at the Institute for Democracy “Societas Civilis” Skopje, a Macedonian think tank organisation devoted to research and capacity-building in matters related to EU in general, and the enlargement process more specifically. He is an IWM Europe's Futures fellow, a member of the Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group, a PhD candidate at Vrije Universiteit's Institute for European Studies and an associate fellow at the German Council on Foreign...

A renowned public figure and director of the Global Focus Center in Romania, Ivan Vejvoda's guest this week is Oana Popescu-Zamfir. Bringing a wealth of academic and government experience to the Europe's Future's programme, Oana is also the director of the Democratic Resilience Index: the first quantitative instrument specifically designed to measure the robustness of democratic institutions around the world with pilot results in Romania, Hungary and the Republic of Moldova. Here, she and...

In this episode Ivan Vejvoda talks with Valbona Zeneli, professor of national security studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch, Germany. Born in Albania, Dr. Zeneli is an economist with an interest in international economics, good governance and international security politics. In a complex discussion, Zeneli and Vejvoda trace the web of Chinese economic influence and address the geopolitical impact of China's global infrastructure development...

In this first podcast of our second season, Soli Özel and Ivan Vejvoda discuss the ongoing refocusing of the US's attention on the Indo-Pacific region and the attendant disengagement of the Superpower from the theaters that defined its international relationships during the cold war. Tracing the line of recent history from the so-called 'Obama doctrine' through the Trump presidency and up to the Biden administration's withdrawal from Afghanistan, the furore in Europe surrounding the AUKUS...

Focusing on the arguments in her latest book – Capitalism On Edge: How Fighting Precarity Can Achieve Radical Change Without Crisis or Utopia – Ivan Vejvoda and Albena Azmanova discuss the future of Guy Standing’s “precariat”, that class of people whom late capitalism has condemned to live without predictability or security and who are asked to take ever greater risks with ever diminishing prospects of reward. They look at the possibilities for change, the insufficiency of ‘inequality” as an...

In this fortnight's Vienna Coffee House Conversation, Ivan Vejvoda speaks to Judy Dempsey, Senior Fellow at Carnegie Europe and editor-in-chief of its Strategic Europe blog . Formerly a columnist for the International New York Times, Germany Correspondent for the International Herald Tribune and Eastern Europe correspondent for the Financial Times - she has borne witness to the tribulations of European democracy over many years covering the NATO and European enlargements and reporting from...

In the latest Vienna Coffee House Conversation, Ivan Vjevoda speaks to political activism expert, Head of Communications at Forum Alpbach and Europe's Futures fellow Teresa Reiter about the way that history is taught, utlisised and remembered in twenty-first century Europe. From the ways that national foreign policy shapes curricula to the tendency to write the recent history of the Western Balkans out of a mainstream narrative that sees the creation of the EU as a successful project to end...

In this fortnight's Vienna Coffee House Conversation, Ivan Vejvoda speaks to EU diplomat and academic Julia De Clerck-Sachsse about the power of narratives to shape policy and the future of the European project. Was Barack Obama right to say that "perhaps [Europe needs] an outsider, somebody who is not European, to remind [it] of the magnitude of what [it has] achieved"? As enlargement proceeds and threats to the democratic order arise, is Europe able to tell itself the stories that it needs...

In our third Vienna Coffee House Conversation Ivan Vejvoda talks to Wolfgang Merkel, professor emeritus of political science at Berlin's Humboldt University, author and editor of numerous influential books - including 2018's Democracy and Crisis: Challenges in Turbulent Times - and a visiting IWM fellow. Starting with a discussion of his article, "Who Governs in Deep Crises?: The Case of Germany" - published as the world reckoned with the spread of coronavirus in May 2020 - Merkel and...

In our second Vienna Coffee House Conversation, Ivan Vejvoda speaks with Srdjan Cvijic. Senior Policy Analyst at the Open Society European Policy Institute and Europe's Futures Fellow, Cvijic is a leading advocate on multiple foreign policy portfolios, particularly on the work of keeping the promise of European Union enlargement. In this discussion, Vejvoda and Cvijic dive into the multi-faceted dimensions of this ever-present European issue and consider the apparent fading of the EU's...

In the first of our series of Vienna Coffee House Conversations, Ivan Vejvoda speaks to Dimitar Bechev - IWM and Atlantic Council fellow, visiting researcher at Oxford and King's college and author of 2017's 'Rival Power: Russia's Influence in Southeast Europe' described in The Economist as 'The right author of the right book at the right time'. In an in-depth conversation, Vejvoda and Bechev discuss the 30 year Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the nature of frozen...

Ivan Vejvoda introduces the topics under consideration - and the guests who will be joining him to consider them - during season one of this new podcast series. Subscribe now and look out for Vienna Coffee House Conversations on Europe's Futures from IWM. Coming very soon to your podcast app of choice.