with ANDREW WROBEL, Founding Partner, Emerging Europe

A fireside chat with AMBASSADOR BAIBA BRAŽE, Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), about the role of public diplomacy, disinformation and the role of women in strengthening security and resilience and building global peace.

Much of the emerging Europe region has a proud history of empowering women: in education, including in STEM, in the workplace, in business, in politics. Nevertheless, the trend is not region-wide, and a resurgence in ‘traditional values’ threatens many of the gains of the past.   

• Why do we still hold women to higher standards than men? 

• Can educating boys to respect girls help bridge the gap? 

• How is business contributing to women’s empowerment? 

• Why do we not pay women as well as men? 

• Do we need quotas (in businesses, in parliament)? Do they work? 

Addressing climate change and accelerating both the digital and green transition is more than ever closely linked to energy security. It is a political priority for Europe, including for the EU and the emerging Europe countries. But dependency on traditional energy sources and providers remains one of the biggest challenges, and often an obstacle in ensuring coherence between political rhetoric and action.

Investment and research into alternatives, including hydrogen, is growing, though not at a pace that can ensure, in the short-term, moving from volatile and high energy prices to more affordable, secure and clean energy. 

• What are the alternatives to ensure energy security in Europe? 

• How can the emerging Europe region contribute to green and digital transition and to energy security and sustainability of the overall continent? 

• What are the possibilities for regional collaboration, including between public and private stakeholders? 

• Are we ready to take the necessary steps to cut traditional energy sources and to boost the technological development, production and use of greener and more sustainable solutions? 

• What are the social and economic costs that we are willing to pay while transitioning to green energy? 

Public sector innovation is about rethinking and reshaping public services to better serve citizens, including greater use of digital tools. Exceptional circumstances require extraordinary responses, which can lead to innovation. There have been positive developments in some parts of the emerging Europe region, but these remain the exception, not the rule. 

• Why is it so difficult to introduce innovation in the public sector and what role does the private sector have to play? 

• Does the region risk being left behind if it ignores digitalisation?  

• Can digitalisation nurture and strengthen democracy? 

• Will the lessons learnt during the Covid-19 pandemic be heeded long term? 

• How can digitalisation and political innovation strengthen public sector resilience to overcome exceptional circumstances? 

The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated trends such as remote working and flexible working hours. Labour shortages aggravated, amongst other factors, by the Great Resignation, might be offering employees more bargaining power. But workers in emerging Europe remain lower paid than their western counterparts, and often with fewer rights.  

• How has the Covid-19 pandemic impacted the labour market in the emerging Europe region? 

• What are the main challenges faced by employees and employers? 

• How are governments and businesses responding to and shaping the future of work in the region? 

• How can we offer workers in the region a pay rise while preserving emerging Europe’s competitiveness? 

• How can we keep talent in the emerging Europe region, and encourage its large diasporas to return home?

Propaganda, false news and misinformation are not new but in the last few years, in particular during the Covid-19 pandemic and more recently with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, they have been drastically increasing in volume.

Easily spread through different media channels and viral on social media, biased and non-factual information can create a fertile ground for incitement to hatred and violence, and can jeopardise political processes, including election results. Civil society, states and companies have been teaming up to tackle this phenomenon. At the same time, concerns are being raised regarding dangerous precedents in limiting the rights of freedom of expression and speech. 

• Where does propaganda start and freedom of expression end? What are the limits? 

• What is being done, including by governments and international institutions, to tackle propaganda and misinformation in Europe? 

• What should be the contribution of the media and tech sectors? 

• Are we fighting false news with legal means? Where do we need accountability? 

• How do we educate people in media literacy, to differentiate between fact and fiction?

A fireside chat with SIR MALCOLM RIFKIND, a British politician and a minister in Margaret Thatcher's and John Major's governments, in the 1980s responsible for Britain's relations with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe; currently a member of the OSCE’s Eminent Persons Group, which has reported on relations between Russia and the West and a member of the Board of the Nuclear Threat Initiative in Washington DC.