The topics raised during the three panel discussions included: the financial and fiscal crisis consequences for the EU institutional setup, the emergence of a multi-speed EU, the inadequate reactions of the Central European states to the EU transformations, the position of euroscepticism in the new crisis contexts.

The speakers of the conference included: Dr. Marek Cichocki, a director at the European Centre Natolin (a College of Europe campus) and former European policy advisor to the late President Lech Kaczynski of Poland, Dr. Petr Mach, a long-serving president of the Centre for Economy and Politics (CEP), the free-market think-tank in Prague and former economic policy advisor to the Czech President Vaclav Klaus, Prof. Vit Hlousek, the director of the International Political Science Institute of the Masaryk University in Brno, Marek Magierowski, former deputy editor-in-chief of the Warsaw daily “Rzeczpospolita”, Lukasz Warzecha, the leading columnist for the “Fakt” daily, Warsaw.

The meeting gave an impulse for an ongoing co-operation of Polish and Czech experts on European policy which would take a form of a virtual forum for exchanging ideas to be launched later this year.

The conference was organized jointly with the Czech think tank Centre for the Study of Politics and Culture (Brno) and co-funded by the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.