LIST OF SPEAKERS

Official Opening

 

Amb. (Ret.) Rastislav Káčer

President of the Slovak Atlantic Commission

Expertise:
• Strategic Concept of NATO
• NATO/EU – Russia Relations
• Enlargement of NATO

Amb. Káčer was elected the President of the Slovak Atlantic Commission, a non-governmental organization in July 2008 after completion of his five-year term in Washington D.C. as the Ambassador of Slovakia to the United States. Prior to this, Rastislav served at different decision-making levels for 16 years. Rastislav began his career as policy analyst at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs rising to Head of the Analytical Unit. Between 1994 and 1998 he served at NATO Headquarters in Brussels and on this return from Brussels became head of Policy Planning Staff and the Director General for Security Policy and Multilateral Affairs at the Ministry. In 2001 he became the Secretary of State at the Ministry of Defence responsible for the negotiation and accession process of Slovakia to NATO. In July 2008, Rastislav was elected President of the Slovak Atlantic Commission which is a member the Atlantic Treaty Association. Rastislav is widely recognized as expert on U.S. domestic and foreign policy, transatlantic relations, defence and security issues. Rastislav speaks fluently Slovak, English, French and Russian. In September 2008, he joined FIPRA Slovakia - Public Policy & Regulatory Advisers consulting company, where he is serving as the Chairman of FIPRA Slovakia. Currently, Rastislav oversees FIPRA assignments in Strategic Government Relations for Foreign Investors, Governments and International Institutions. Rastislav also serves as a Special Adviser to the FIPRA Group in Defence Policy and Procurement Team.

 

H.E. Ľubomír Galko

Minister of Defence of the Slovak Republic

Mr. Ľubomír Galko has been appointed Minister of Defence of the Slovak Republic in July this year. Prior to that assignment (from 2004) he worked as the Director of DONA DN Company (JCS) in Bratislava. He is a member and a Vice President of the political party Freedom and Solidarity, which won entry to the National Council of the Slovak Republic in the parliamentary election in June this year. Before entering politics, he worked as a manager in charge of network of retail & wholesale stores and software applications development (1993 – 2001), Director of Kaufland Hypermarket (2001 – 2003) and from 2003 to 2004 he held the position of the Deputy Director in the Interfluct Slovakia Company.

 

State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Slovak Republic

Mr. Ježovica has been the State Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs since July this year. Prior to this assignment, he was the international policy analyst of the think tank M.E.S.A. 10. He started his professional career in 1989 at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Since 1991 he was the consul at the Embassy of the Slovak Republic in Washington, D.C. In 1996 – 1999 he headed the Human Rights Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As a deputy head of the mission at the Embassy of the Slovak Republic in the USA, in 1999 – 2003, he contributed to the accession of the Slovak Republic to OECD, NATO and European Union. In 2003 – 2007 he was the advisor on the foreign policy of the Prime Minister at that time, Mikuláš Dzurinda. He represented Slovak Republic in the EU, NATO, UN, CE and the OSCE as well as the European Court for Human Rights.

 

PANEL 1: GLOBAL AMBITONS OF POST-LISBON EUROPE: DREAMS OR REALITY?

Pavol Demeš

Senior Transatlantic Fellow, German Marshall Fund of the U. S., Bratislava; Former Minister of International Relations, Slovakia

Expertise:
•    Strategic Concept of NATO
•    Meaning and Importance of Article 5
•    NATO/EU – Russia Relations
•    NATO Enlargement

Pavol Demeš serves as the Senior Transatlantic Fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, Slovakia. Prior to this position, he had been the Director of Bratislava office for Central and Eastern Europe of the same institution since January 2000. Previously, he served as the Executive Director of the Slovak Academic Information Agency-Service Center for the Third Sector, a leading NGO in the country. He also served as Foreign Policy Advisor to the President of the Slovak Republic (1993 - 97), and from 1991 - 92 he was the Slovak Minister of International Relations. An internationally recognized NGO leader, Demeš served as the elected spokesperson of the Gremium of the Third Sector, a volunteer advocacy coalition, and has served on the boards of national and international associations and foundations. In 1999 he was awarded a six-month public policy research fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C. Prior to the "Velvet Revolution" in November 1989, Demeš was a bio-medical researcher at Comenius University in Bratislava. He is a graduate of Charles University in Prague (1980). He received the EU-US Democracy and Civil Society Award (in 1998), the USAID Democracy and Governance Award (1999), Royal Dutch decoration Knight of the Order of Orange Nassau (2005), Yugoslav Star of First Class (2005).

 

Eduard Kukan

Member of the European Parliament and Former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Slovak Republic

Ambassador Eduard Kukan was elected Member of the European Parliament after the elections held in May 2009. He began his diplomatic career at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Prague in 1964 where he held numerous significant positions. He served at the Embassies of Zambia (1968 – 1973), United States (1977 – 1981) and Ethiopia (1985 – 1988). In 1990 he became Permanent Representative of Czechoslovakia (later Slovakia) to the UN. 1994 he was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Slovak Republic (only 10 months in the office until the parliamentary elections) and again from 1998 to 2006 (two terms). In 1998 Amb. Kukan was appointed Special Envoy of the UN for the Balkans by the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan where he served until 2001.

Amb. István Gyarmati

President and CEO, International Centre for Democratic Transition, Budapest

Prof. Dr. István Gyarmati is the President & CEO of the International Centre for Democratic Transition. He has been a Foreign Service officer since he graduated from the Budapest University of Economics, Faculty of Diplomacy. Ha also holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and is a candidate of Strategic Studies. Ambassador Gyarmati is currently the Chairman of the Board of the Centre for Euro Atlantic Integration and Democracy in Budapest and Co-Chairman of the International Security Advisory Board for Southeastern Europe of the Geneva-based Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces. Between 2008 and 2009, he was the head of the Defense Minister's Task Force to draft the National Military Strategy of the Republic of Hungary. He is also a member of the ISS, European Council for Foreign Relations, European Advisory Group, NATO Defense College and numerous scientific projects, Associate Professor at the Zrínyi Miklós National Defense University. He is fluent in German, Russian and English as well as he is the author of numerous publications on security policy, European security, conflict management and Hungarian defense policy.

 

Tomáš Valášek

Slovak Atlantic Comission; Director of Foreign Policy and Defence, Centre for European Reform, London

Expertise:
•    NATO Military Capabilities and Operations
•    Non-proliferation and Arms Control
•    Common European Security and Defence Policy

Tomáš Valášek is Director of Foreign Policy & Defence at the Centre for European Reform. He has written extensively on transatlantic relations, Common European Foreign and Security Policy and on defence industrial issues. He is also a senior advisor to the Brussels Office of the World Security Institute. Previously, he served as Policy Director and head of the Security and Defence Policy Division at the Slovak Ministry of Defence. He oversaw the ministry's defence analysis, planning & evaluation activities as well as its legislative efforts, military missions and international security initiatives. He was responsible for relations with NATO and the EU and advised Ukraine and Bosnia, among others, on NATO and EU integration. Before joining the Ministry of Defence, Tomáš Valášek founded and directed the Brussels Office of the World Security Institute (formerly the Center for Defence Information, CDI), a Washington, D.C.-based independent defence and security think-tank (2002 - 2006). From 1996 to 2002 he worked as Senior European Analyst in CDI's Washington, DC office. Mr. Valášek is the editor and co-author of "The 'Easternization' of Europe's Security Policy" (IVO-CDI, October 2004), and numerous articles appearing in newspapers and journals including Wall Street Journal, Jane's Defence Weekly, and the Cambridge Review of International Affairs. He is a holder of an M.A. in International Affairs from the George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and a B.A. in journalism from the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia. He speaks Slovak, Czech and French.

 

PANEL 2: WORLD AFTER THE CRISIS - CONSEQUENCES FOR GLOBAL SECURITY AND POWER BALANCE

 

Philip Stephens

Associate Editor, Financial Times, London

Philip Stephens is a commentator and author. He is Associate Editor of the Financial Times where as chief political commentator he writes twice-weekly columns on global and British affairs. He travels widely in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the United States. He frequently addresses audiences of business leaders, politicians and public policymakers as speaker and moderator at international conferences on politics and global affairs. He is a director of the Ditchley Foundation for the furtherance of transatlantic understanding, a trustee of the Institute for Public Policy Research, Hon Treasurer of the Franco-British Colloque, a trustee of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, and a Fulbright fellow. He contributes regularly to political and foreign affairs journals and radio and television news and current affairs programmes. He was named Political Journalist of the Year in the 2008 British Press Awards and has received many other commendations for his writing. He joined the Financial Times in 1983 after working for as a correspondent for Reuters in Brussels and has been the FT's Economics Editor, Political Editor and the Editor of the newspaper's UK edition. He is the author of Politics and the Pound (MacMillan), a study of the British government's relations with Europe since 1979, and of Tony Blair (Viking/Politico's), a biography of the British prime minister.

 

Camille Grand

Director, Foundation pour la recherche stratégique, Paris

Expertise:
•    European Security Affairs
•    Nuclear Policy - Deterrence, Disarmament, Non-Proliferation
•    Missile Defence

Appointed managing director of the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique by its board in May 2008, Camille Grand has been in office since September 1st, 2008. From the fall 2009 till spring 2010, he served as a civilian adviser to the group of experts on a New Strategic Concept for NATO chaired by Mrs. Madeleine Albright. Prior to this assignment, he was deputy director for disarmament and multilateral affairs in the directorate for strategic, security and disarmament affairs of the French ministry of foreign affairs (2006-08). In this capacity, he was in charge of chemical and biological non-proliferation, conventional arms control, small arms and light weapons, land mines and cluster munitions, OSCE and Council of Europe affairs, and has been directly involved in several arms control negotiations (i.a. CFE Treaty, cluster munitions treaty, CWC and BTWC review conferences). He has also been the French representative in several groups within the EU (CODUN, COSCE) and NATO (HLTF). He was previously the deputy diplomatic adviser to the French minister of defence, Mrs. Alliot-Marie (2002-2006). He also served as an expert on nuclear policy and non-proliferation in the strategic affairs department of the French MoD (1999-2002), and was an associate fellow in the the Institut français des relations internationales (IFRI) (2000-2002).

 

Brigita Schmögnerová

Former Vice President, Environment, Procurement and Administration, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, London

Expertise:
•    Econometrics
•    Privatization
•    Transition

As Vice President for Environment, Procurement and Administration, Ms. Schmögnerová was member of the Executive Committee, had overall responsibility for the formulation and delivery of the Bank's policies regarding environment and sustainability, procurement and purchasing activities, and the management of the Bank's properties and facilities. In addition, the Vice President also assists in policy dialogue with our countries of operation. During her career, Ms. Schmögnerová served as economic adviser to the President of the Slovak Republic (1993), Deputy Prime Minister (1994), Member of Parliament (1995 - 1998) and Finance Minister (1998 - 2002). On 28 February 2002, Ms. Schmögnerová was appointed as Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), at the Under-Secretary-General level. In 2000, Ms. Schmögnerová was awarded the World Finance Minister of the Year Award by Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC, which cited her courage in implementing important reforms in the banking sector, macroeconomic stabilization programmes, tax administration and fiscal management. In her capacity as a Governor or alternate Governor, Ms. Schmögnerová worked closely with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. She also contributed to the Slovak membership in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2000) and acceleration of the Slovak pre-accession process to the European Union. Ms. Schmögnerová has published numerous articles in the fields of econometrics, privatization and transition. She has also written books of poetry and essays.

 

Amb. (Ret.) John C. Kornblum

Senior Counselor, Noerr LLP, Berlin

Expertise:
•    Transatlantic Relations
•    European Affairs

Ambassador Kornblum has a long record of service in the United States and Europe both as a diplomat and as a businessman. He is recognized as one of the most eminent American experts on European-American political and economic relations, in particular in Central and Eastern Europe. Ambassador Kornblum served as the U.S. Ambassador to Germany from 1997 to 2001. Before that he occupied a number of high level diplomatic posts including Assistant Secretary for European Affairs, Special envoy for the Dayton Peace Process, Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (Helsinki Process), deputy U.S. Ambassador to NATO and U.S. Minister and Deputy Commandant of Forces in divided Berlin. From 2001 - 2009, he was chairman of Lazard Freres Germany. Nowadays, he serves as Senior Counsellor to the international law firm Noerr, Stiefenhofer Lutz and as a senior advisor to the world wide consultancy Accenture. Mr. Kornblum has served on a number of supervisory and advisory boards including Thyssen-Krupp, Technologies AG, Bayer AG, Russell Reynolds and Motorola Europe. He is a member of the boards of the American Chamber of Commerce in Germany, the American Academy in Berlin, the Deutsche Oper in Berlin and of numerous non-profit organizations on both sides of the Atlantic.

Miriam L. Campanella

Associate Professor, IPE University of Turin, Former Advisor to the Italian Minister of Economy and Finance, Turin

•    Impact of the 2008 - 2009 Financial Crisis

Miriam L. Campanella is Associate Professor of international political economy at the University of Turin and holds a Jean Monnet permanent course on EMU policies and institutions. She studied at the MIT Center for International Studies from 1980 until 1986, where she has been a guest lecturer. In 1997, Ms. Campanella held a Fulbright chair at the University of Pittsburgh. From 2001 to 2008, she was appointed by the Minister of Economy and Finance in Rome to work on topics ranging from EU budget reform and the admission of new Eastern members to European defence spending. In the wake of 2008 financial crisis, her research interests shifted from the diversification of foreign reserves in export economies to the creation of sovereign wealth funds. In July 2009, Ms. Campanella was awarded the 2010-2011 Transatlantic Academy Fellowship. She has contributed to several books and journals, including co-authoring EU Economic Governance and Globalization with Sylvester C.W. Eijffinger in 2003.

 

PANEL 3: AFGHANISTAN AT CROSSROADS: SUCCESS OR VICTORY?

 

Stephen Flanagan

Senior Vice-President and Henry A. Kissinger Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C.

Expertise:
•    International Security
•    Transatlantic Affairs

 

Amb. Francesc Vendrell

Former UN and EU Special Envoy for Afghanistan, Visiting Professor at John Hopkins University, Senior Visiting Fellow at the LSE, London

Ambassador Vendrell is the Chairman of the Board of the Afghanistan Analysis Network as well as Senior Consultant at the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue in Geneva. He works as the Visiting Professor in the School of Advance International Studies (SAIS) at the John Hopkins University, Bologna campus. He also gives lectures at the London School of Economics as the Visiting Senior Fellow. Among numerous significant diplomatic positions he held, belongs the position of Special Representative of the EU for Afghanistan in 2002 – 2008 as well as Personal Representative of the UN Secretary General for Afghanistan and Head of the United Nations Special Mission to Afghanistan (UNSMA) in 2000 – 2001. During his long diplomatic career mostly in the United Nations, he also worked as the Deputy Special Personal Representative of the Secretary General for East Timor (1993 – 1999), Special Envoy for Cambodia (1997 – 1998) and Papua New Guinea (1994 – 1998) as well as Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict (1992).

Jennes de Mol

Director of the Provincial Reconstruction Team, Civilian Commander of Task Force Uruzgan

Mr. de Mol has been Deputy Head of the Mission at the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Prague since 2008. He is responsible for EU and political affairs, the coordination of the Czech-EU presidency (from January to June 2009) as well as internal management. He also works as the Civilian Representative in the Task Force Uruzgan (TFU VIII) and Director of the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT 8 and 9). Together with General Kees van den Heuvel he is responsible for the overall management of the Task Force in Uruzgan Province in Afghanistan. During his career he has held various positions at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he was assigned to be First Secretary at the Netherlands Permanent Mission to the UN and other international organizations in Geneva (1999-2003) or Head of the Department for Culture, Education and Science at the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Moscow dealing with the Russian Federation, Georgia, Armenia and Central-Asian Republics (1995-1999).

 

Abdul Jalil Ghafoory

Media and Public Relation Officer at the Embassy of Afghanistan, Washington, D.C.

Expertise:
•    Middle East
•    Democratization Process in Afghanistan

Mr. Ghafoory currently serves as the Media and Public Relations Officer at the Embassy of Afghanistan in Washington D.C. Previously he held the same position at the Embassy of Afghanistan in Brussels. Prior to this assignment, in 2005 - 2007, Mr. Ghafoory worked as the Afghan Media Correspondent and Researcher. In 2004 he was the Editor-in-Chief for the Austrian Refugee Service in Vienna where he was in charge of the coordination between Austrian authorities, experts and politicians on different refugee issues in the context of their integration into Austrian society. During his career, Mr. Ghafoory has held many other positions such as Information Officer in the International Organization for Migration in Vienna (2002) or Liaison Officer for Education Committee for Afghan Refugees (ECAR) where he was responsible for the briefing media and connecting ECAR with other international organizations.

 

SPECIAL GUEST AND REMARKS

Richard Sulík

Speaker of the National Council of the Slovak Republic

Mr. Richard Sulík was appointed Speaker of the National Council of the Slovak Republic after the parliamentary elections in June this year. Apart from this assignment, he is also founding member and the Chairman of the government political party Freedom and Solidarity. From 1991 he was the Director of the FaxCOPY Company until 2002, when he became Advisor to the Finance Minister Ivan Miloš responsible for the elaboration of the “flat tax“ concept. In 2006 he became Advisor of another Finance Minister Ján Počiatek.

 

NIGHT OWL SESSION 1: HOW WILL EU MANAGE POST-DAYTON BOSNIA?

 

Milan Nič

Deputy Director, Office of the State Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Slovak Republic

Expertise:
• The Balkans

Milan Nič has recently become the Deputy Director of the State Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Slovak Republic. Prior to this assignment he was the Development Director of Pontis Foundation, Slovakia. Previously, he worked as advisor to the High Representative Miroslav Lajčák in Bosnia and Herzegovina (2007 - 2009) and broadcaster for the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (1995 - 2002). He is also a part-time analyst for the European Stability Initiative policy institute. Mr. Nič holds degrees from the Charles University in Prague, the Central European University in Budapest and one-year diploma from the SAIS Johns Hopkins University Bologna Center. He is holder of the 2004 Karol Rybárik's Award for the best young professional in Slovak foreign policy.

 

Štefan FÜLE

Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighbourhood Policy, European Commission, Brussels

Expertise:
•    European Affairs
•    Security and Defence Policy

Amb. Štefan Füle has become European Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighbourhood Policy in February this year. Until then, in 2009, he served in the Czech government as the European Affairs Minister. Amb. Füle started his professional career at the Czechoslovakian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1987 and since then has held many important positions at the Ministry, Czech embassies abroad as well as international organizations such as UN or NATO. In 1990 - 1995 he served in the UN structures as the First Secretary of the Czechoslovakian (later Czech) Permanent Delegation at the UN, later Member and Alternate Representative to the UN Security Council. After that he directed the United Nations Department (1995 - 1996) and Security Policy Department (1996 - 1998) at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1998 he was appointed Czech Ambassador to Lithuania and in 2003 became Czech ambassador to the UK. In 2005 he became Czech Permanent Representative to NATO until 2009 when was appointed European Affairs Minister.

 

Miroslav Lajčák

Former High Representative and EU Special Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina; Former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Slovak Republic, Bratislava

Expertise:
•    Foreign policy of the Slovak Republic
•    The Balkan Region

Mr. Miroslav Lajčák has during his career held numerous significant positions at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as other governmental institutions. Mr. Lajčák studied law at the Comenius University and continued his studies at the State Institute of International Relations in Moscow. He launched his career at the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Czechoslovakia in Prague. In 1993, he became Director of Cabinet of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, later Director of the Cabinet of the Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic. In 1994, he was appointed Ambassador of the Slovak Republic to Japan, later he served as Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (later Serbia and Montenegro), Republic of Albania and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. In 2005 -2006, he was chosen to be Personal Representative of EU High Representative for CFSP Javier Solana to facilitate the Montenegrin dialogue. Since 2007, Mr. Lajčák worked as High Representative of International Community and EU Special Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina and in January 2009 he was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Slovak Republic.

 

Ivan Vejvoda

Executive Director, Balkan Trust for Democracy, The German Marshall Fund of the United States, Belgrade

Expertise:
•    European Union, EU Enlargement and Integration
•    Central and Eastern Europe
•    The Balkans
•    Governance, Civic Participation and Democratization

Ivan Vejvoda is the Executive Director of the Balkan Trust for Democracy (a project of the German Marshall Fund of the United States) since June 2003. He was Senior Foreign Policy Adviser to the Prime Minister of Serbia, Zoran Djindjic in 2002 - 2003. From 1998 - 2002 he was Executive Director of the Soros Foundation in Belgrade. As political scientist, he worked at the Institute for European Studies in Belgrade (1984 - 1993) and has taught European studies, comparative politics and political theory at the University of Sussex, UK (1993 - 96), Macalester College, Minnesota (1996 - 97) and Smith College, Massachusetts (1997 - 98). He has among other co-edited Democratization in Central and Eastern Europe (Pinter 2000, Continuum 2002) and Yugoslavia and After (Longman 1997). He was a co-founder of the Democratic Forum in Belgrade (1989) and of the Belgrade Circle of independent intellectuals (1992). In 2006 he was decorated by the French President with the National Order of Merit in the rank of Officer, and in 2007 by the Italian President with the Order of the Italian Star of Solidarity, second rank (Commander).

 

NIGHT OWL SESSION 2: REGIONAL SECURITY INTEGRATION: NORDIC AND VISEGRAD EXPERIENCE

 

Jozef Bátora

Associate Professor, Institute of European Studies and International Relations, Comenius University, Bratislava

Expertise:
•    European Integration
•    EU Foreign Policy
•    Transatlantic Security Architecture

Jozef Bátora is associate professor at the Institute of European Studies and International Relations, Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, Comenius University in Bratislava. Previously he was research fellow at the Institute for European Integration Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna (2006 - 2009), senior researcher at ARENA - Centre of European Studies at the University of Oslo (2006), and visiting scholar at Scancor, Stanford University (2003 - 2004). He holds a PhD in political science from the University of Oslo (2006). Mr.Bátora authored the monograph Foreign Ministries and the Information Revolution: Going Virtual? published by Brill / Martinus Nijhoff in 2008. He has also published inter alia in Journal of European Public Policy, The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Cambridge Review of International Affairs and West European Politics. He is also lecturer in the Train4Diplo Program of the European Commission (DG Relex) preparing officials for work in the European External Action Service.

 

Róbert Ondrejcsák

State Secretary of the Ministry of Defence of the Slovak Republic

Expertise:
•    Central Europe
•    Foreign and Security Policy of the USA
•    Transatlantic Relations

State Secretary of the Ministry of Defence Mr. Róbert Ondrejcsák assumed the office after the elections in July this year. Prior to his appointment, from 2007, he worked as the Executive Director in the Center for European and North Atlantic Affairs (CENAA) - think tank focused on international relations and security policy. Meanwhile, he was one of the editors of the prestigious project Panorama of Global Security Environment and lecturer at the Faculty of Political Sciences and International Relations of University of Matej Bel. Before joining CENAA he served as the Deputy Chief of Mission at the Slovak Embassy to Hungary (2005-2007). From 2003 to 2005, he held the position of the Director of the Security and Defence Studies Institute at the Ministry of Defence of the Slovak Republic. He also worked as foreign and security policy advisor to the Vice-President of the National Council of the Slovak Republic in 2002-2003.

 

Espen Barth Eide

Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Norway, Oslo

Expertise:
•    International Security Policy
•    UN, NATO, OSCE and European Security Issues

Espen Barth Eide is Deputy Minister in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a position he has held since June 2010. He was also Deputy Minister in the MFA in the first Stoltenberg Government of 2000-2001, and he was the Deputy Minister of Defence (State Secretary) from October 2005 to June 2010. Among a number of major programmes, Mr. Eide was in charge of the political process that led to the recent choice of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter as Norway's new combat aircraft. He has furthermore been actively engaged in raising the issue of the Arctic/High North on the Norwegian, Nordic and NATO agendas, and he is engaged in the inter-ministerial development of Norway's policies on Afghanistan and other on-going operations. Mr. Eide was a senior researcher at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) from 1993-1999 and a Director of the Department of International Politics at NUPI from 2002-2005. As a researcher, he focused on issues ranging from international peacekeeping and UN reform to European, arctic and transatlantic security. He was engaged in a number of international research programs, often in the intersection between academia and policy development.

 

Björn Lyrvall

Director-General for Political Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Sweden, Stockholm

Expertise:
•    European Affairs
•    The Balkans

Mr. Björn Lyrvall has been working as Director-General for the Political Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs since September 2007. He started his diplomatic career in 1985 as Vice-Consul at the Swedish Consulate General in Leningrad. Later, Mr. Lyrvall held the positions of Second Secretary at the Swedish Embassy in Moscow (1989-1993) and Counsellor at the Embassy in the UK (1997-1999). In 1995-1997 he was assigned to be the Special Assistant to Bosnia High Representative and EU Special Envoy, Carl Bildt. In 1999 he became the Director of Western Balkans Section until 2002, when became external relations coordinator (2002-2003) and later Representative to the Political and Security Committee in the Swedish Permanent Representation to the EU (2003-2007).

PANEL 4: EASTERN EUROPE AND EASTERN PARTNERSHIP: MUTUAL EXPECTATIONS

Balázs Jarábik

Country Representative for Belarus and Ukraine, PACT; Associate Fellow, FRIDE, Kyiv

Expertise:
•    CIS Affairs
•    Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia
•    Promotion of Democracy

 

H.E. Iurie Leanca

Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration of Moldova

H.E. Mr. Iurie Leanca started his career in 1986 at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1993-1997 he served as Minister-Counsellor at the Embassy of Moldova to the USA and later as Ambassador on Special Mission of European Integration. In 1999 he became First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, the position that he held until 2001 when he became Vice-Chairman of ASCOM Company. In 2005-2007 he worked as Senior Adviser to the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities. In the meantime, he was Vice-Chairman of the Foreign Policy Association until 2009 when he became member of the parliament and later, in September of the same year, Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration of the Republic of Moldova.

 

Oleksandr Horin

Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine

H. E. Oleksandr Horin started his diplomatic career as the First Secretary and the Counsellor of the Permanent Representation of Ukraine to the UN in 1993. In 1997 he was appointed Deputy Head of the Directorate of the Administration of the President of Ukraine, the position he held until 1999 when he became Minister - Counsellor of the Embassy of Ukraine to Canada. While being assigned Ambassador of Ukraine to Singapore in 2002 – 2006, he also served as the Ambassador to Brunei Darussalam with residence in Singapore. In 2006 he came back to Ukraine to work as the Ambassador at large in the First, later Third Territorial Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs until April 2008 when was appointed Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs.

 

Anders Aslund

Senior Fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington, D.C.

Expertise:
• Post-communist Economic Transformation

Anders Aslund is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics since 2006, and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. Dr. Aslund has worked as an economic adviser to the Russian, Ukrainian and Kyrgyz governments. He is the author of nine books, has edited 14 books that were published widely. Previously, Dr. Aslund was the Director of the Russian and Eurasian Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is co-chairman of the board of trustees of the Kyiv School of Economics and Chairman of the Advisory Council of the Center for Social and Economic Research (CASE), Warsaw. He was the founding director of the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics and professor at the Stockholm School of Economics. Dr. Aslund served as a Swedish diplomat in Moscow, Geneva and Kuwait. He earned his doctorate from the University of Oxford.

 

PANEL 5: THE "VISEGRAD FOUR": ENERGIZED

 

H.E. Mikuláš Dzurinda

Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Slovak Republic

H. E. Mr. Mikuláš Dzurinda has been appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in July 2010. Prior to his appointment, he held many positions in the parliament as well as the government; the most significant was the position of the Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic in 1998 - 2006. In 2004, during his government, Slovak Republic became the member of the NATO and the European Union. He was member of the National Council of the Slovak Republic (1994 - 1998 and 2006 - 2010) for the Democratic and Christian Union (SDKÚ-DS) that he founded in 2000 and since then he has been its president.

 

H.E. János Martonyi

Minister of Foreign Affairs of Hungary

Expertise:
•    European Integration
•    International Politics
•    Central European Cooperation

 

H.E. Karel Schwarzenberg

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic

Expertise:
•    European Affairs
•    Human Rights

H.E. Mr. Karel Schwarzenberg was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs after the elections in July this year for the second time. During his impressive political and diplomatic career, he has held many significant positions in the Czech government as well as abroad. In 1990 he was appointed member of the Advisory Board of the first Czech president Václav Havel. Later that year, he became his Councellor until 1992, when he was assigned to lead the first OSCE Delegation in Nagorno-Karabakh after the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan broke out. After a longer pause between 1992 and 2004, he became Member of the Senate of the Czech Republic, Member of the Committee on EU Affairs and the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Security (2005-2007). In the meantime, he served as the member of the Permanent Representation of the Czech Republic in the CE Parliamentary Assembly (since 2005), later, as member of the Permanent Representation in the NATO Parliamentary Assembly until 2007,when he was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs for the first time.

MIKOŁAJ DOWGIELEWICZ

State Secretary for European Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland

Mikołaj Dowgielewicz is State Secretary for European Affairs and Economic Policy in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Representative of the Government responsible for the government bodies preparations for the Polish EU Council Presidency. He worked at the Political Cabinet of the Minister of Foreign Affairs (1998-2000) and then as the Adviser to the President of the Commission of European Law of the Sejm - Lower House of the Polish Parliament (2000-2001) and as the Head of Academic Service at the College of Europe (2002-2003). In 2003 he began his work in Brussels as the Adviser to the President of the European Parliament, Mr. Pat Cox. In 2004 he took the post of the European Commission Spokesperson for Institutional Relations and Communication Strategy and later, in 2007, began work in the Cabinet of the Vice-President of the European Commission, Ms Margot Wallström. From  December 2007 to 31st December 2009 he was the Secretary of the Committee for European Integration and Secretary of State at the Office of the Committee for European Integration.

 

PANEL 6: NEW EURO-ATLANTIC SECURITY ARCHITECTURE: VALUES AND INTERESTS

 

Amb. Marc Perrin de Brichambaut

Secretary General of the OSCE, Vienna

Ambassador de Brichambaut started his career at the Conseil d'Etat, first as an administrative judge, later as Conseiller d'Etat. In 1978, he was posted to New York to work as Special Assistant to the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for International Economic and Social Affairs. He returned to Paris in 1981, where he became an adviser to French Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson. In 1983 - 1984, he was Chief of Staff to Roland Dumas, then Minister of European Affairs. When Mr. Dumas became Foreign Minister, Amb. de Brichambaut continued to serve as his Chief of Staff. In 1986, he moved to New York, as Cultural Counsellor for the French Embassy, returning to Paris in 1988 as Principal Adviser to Defence Minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement. From 1991 to 1994, Ambassador de Brichambaut represented France as Head of Delegation at the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) in Vienna, which in due course became the OSCE. From 1994 to 1998, he headed the French Foreign Ministry's Legal Division. His most recent post prior to his appointment as OSCE Secretary General was as Director for Strategic Affairs at the French Defence Ministry from 1998.

 

Amb. Ivan Korčok

Permanent Representative of the Slovak Republic to the European Union, Brussels

Expertise:
• European Affairs

Ambassador Korčok serves as the permanent representative of the Slovak Republic to the EU since October 2009. Prior to this assignment, in 2005 - 2009 he was extraordinary and plenipotentiary ambassador in Berlin. Amb. Korčok began his career in 1992 at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs where he has held many significant positions such as the head of the Department for Policy Planning and Analysis (1997 - 1998), Director General of the Division of International Organizations and Security Policy (2001 - 2002) or State Secretary in 2002 - 2004. In the meantime, in 2003, he was the head of the Delegation of the Slovak Republic on Accession Talks to NATO and the member of the European Convention in Brussels.

 

H.E. Nickolay Mladenov

Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bulgaria

Expertise:
•    Foreign and Defence Policy of the Republic of Bulgaria
•    European Affairs
•    The Middle East

Nickolay Evtimov Mladenov was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Bulgaria by the 41st National Assembly on January 27th 2010. Between July 2009 and January 2010 he was Minister of Defence of the Republic of Bulgaria. Between 2007 and 2009, he was a Member of the European Parliament. He served on the Foreign Affairs Committee - Security and Defence Subcommittee, and on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee. He was also First vicechair of the Delegation for relations with Iraq and served on the delegations for Israel and Afghanistan. Since 2005 he has consulted the World Bank, NDI, IRI and other international organizations in South Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Morocco. Between 2001 and 2005 Mr. Mladenov was a Member of the Bulgarian Parliament where he served as Vice-Chairman of the European Integration Committee and sat on the Foreign and Defence Policy Committee. During that period he was representative to the Constitutional Convention on the Future of Europe. Previously he worked for the World Bank and the Open Society Institute for Bulgaria and South East Europe. He was election observer in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ukraine, and Pakistan. In 2008 he headed the EU election observation mission to Ghana. Mr. Mladenov has a MA degree in War Studies from King's College, London, BA and MA - International Relations, from the University for National and World Economy, Sofia.

 

Amb. Victoria Nuland

Special Envoy for Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, U.S. Department of State, Washington, D.C.

 

Timofei Bordachev

Director, Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies, Moscow

Expertise:
•    Russian Foreign Policy
•    EU – Russia Relations

Dr. Timofei V. Bordachev is Deputy-dean of the School of International Affairs and World Economy and the Director of Studies in the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy (SVOP). He is also directing the Center for International Studies within the Faculty of International Economics and Politics of State University. Before that, Dr. Bordachev was working as Research Fellow in Carnegie Moscow Center (1998 - 2003), Senior Research Fellow and Senior Research Associate at the Russian Academy of Science (Institute of USA and Canada, Institute of Europe) where he developed research programs on conflict resolution and Russia - EU affairs (1999 - 2006). Nowadays, Mr. Bordachev is conducting extensive research and writes widely on Russian foreign policy and Russia - EU relations, with particular attention to the issue of post - PCA agreement debate, decision-making process, public relations and advocacy. Dr. Bordachev was the principal author of Council on Foreign and Defense Policy "Russia - EU" Report (SVOP Annual Assembly, Spring 2004).

 

Andrew Wilson

Senior Policy Fellow, The European Council on Foreign Relations, London

Expertise:
•    Eastern Europe

Andrew Wilson is a Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. He has previously held academic positions at the London School of Economics, Cambridge, UK and University College London. At UCL he was Reader in Ukrainian Studies. His most recent books are The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation (Yale UP, third edition, 2009), Ukraine's Orange Revolution (Yale UP, 2005) and Virtual Politics: Faking Democracy in the Post-Soviet World (Yale UP, 2005). His publications at ECFR include Dealing with Yanukovych's Ukraine, The Limits of Enlargement-lite: EU and Russian Power in the Troubled Neighbourhood, Meeting Medvedev: The Politics of the Putin Succession and Can the EU Win the Peace in Georgia?

 

PANEL 7: THE NEW STRATEGIC CONCEPT OF NATO

Amb. (Ret.) Jerzy M. Nowak

Vice President of the Board, Polish Euro-Atlantic Association, Former Ambassador of Poland to NATO, Warsaw

Ambassador Nowak serves as Vice President of the Euro-Atlantic Association. Prior to this position he held the position of the President since March 2008. He has been working as Senior Research Fellow at the Center for International Relations in Warsaw, lecturer at the Diplomatic Academy in Warsaw and at the N. Copernicus University in Torun as well as Representative of the Minister for the Security Policy Review in 2009. He started his impressive diplomatic career at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1960. Since then he was posted in Dar-es-Salaam, Buenos Aires and New York (Mission to the UN). In 1990-1997 he worked as Permanent Representative of Poland to the OSCE and IAEA and to the UN Office in Vienna in the rank of ambassador and after that as Director of the Department of the Security Policy (1997-2000) in the MFA. With great deal he contributed to the Polish accession to NATO and the Revised CFE Treaty. In 2000-2002 he was assigned as Ambassador to Spain and the Principality of Andorra, later, as Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Poland to NATO and WEU (2002-2007) in Brussels and in 2005-2007 he worked as Dean of the North-Atlantic Council.

Damon Wilson

Vice President and Director of the International Security Program, Atlantic Council of the USA, Washington, D.C.

Expertise:
•    NATO Military Capabilities
•    NATO Operations

Damon Wilson is the Vice President and Director of the International Security Program at the Atlantic Council of the United States.  Previously, he served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European Affairs at the National Security Council.  His other governmental positions have included Chief of Staff and Executive Secretary at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq; Director for Central, Eastern and Northern European Affairs at the National Security Council; Deputy Director of the Private Office of NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson; and various positions at the Department of State dealing with European security and China.  Mr. Wilson completed his graduate studies at the Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs during which he worked in the African Affairs Directorate at the National Security Council.  Following his undergraduate studies at Duke University and the University of Grenoble, France, Mr. Wilson served in Rwanda with Save the Children's Children and War Program.

 

Julian Lindley-French

Eisenhower Professor of Defence Strategy, Netherlands Defence Academy, Alphen

Expertise:
•   European Security Policy
•   Defence Policy
•   NATO

Julian Lindley-French is Eisenhower Professor of Defence Strategy at the Netherlands Defence Academy, Special Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of Leiden and Senior Associate Fellow of the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom.  He is also an Advisor to General Sir David Richards, Chief of the General Staff and Head of the Commander's Initiative Group (CIG) for NATO's Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC). A member of the Strategic Advisory Group of the Atlantic Council of the US in Washington he was formerly a Course Director at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy and European Co-Chair of the US-European Working Group on Stabilization and Reconstruction Missions for CSIS and is currently Project Leader for the Atlantic Council's Stratcon 2010 project on the NATO Strategic Concept.

 

Paul Flaherty

Deputy Permanent Representative, United Kingdom Joint Delegation to NATO, Brussels

Paul Flaherty joined the UK Ministry of Defence in 1978.  He held a series of finance and policy posts: introduced the first MOD catalogue for IT and was Deputy Director International Organisations from 1989-95. Promoted 1* in 1995, he served with the Office of the Health Ombudsman before taking up the post of Defence Counsellor in the UK Delegation to the OSCE in Vienna. He was the Chief UK Negotiator for the Adapted CFE Treaty and the Charter for European Security. He chaired the negotiation of the OSCE document on Small Arms and Light Weapons. On his return to London, he was appointed Director €uro and in 2002 became the Civil Secretary (Head of J8 and J9) of the UK’s Permanent Joint Headquarters, covering UK operations throughout the world including Afghanistan and Iraq.  He became Defence Counsellor in the UK Delegation to NATO in 2004. He took up his current post of Deputy Permanent Representative in the UK Delegation in September 2008.

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