The Red House for Culture and Debate has the pleasure to invite you to:

Belgrade, Pristina, Ankara: Does the EU Have a Strategy for South Eastern Europe?
public lecture by Gerald Knaus (European Stability Initiative)

Ever since the dramatic events in Kosovo in 1999, the European Union sees the EU membership trajectory for the Balkan countries as a tool for stabilisation of the region. The “EU membership promise” has been perceived as an instrument of excercising soft power over a region that includes Turkey as well. With recent developments across the Balkans, is the EU soft power fading away?

Gerald Knaus is the founder and chairman of the European Stability Initiative (ESI), a Berlin-based think tank (www.esiweb.org) working on South-eastern Europe, Turkey, the Caucasus and the future of European enlargement. He studied at the University of Oxford, the University of Brussels’ Institute d’Etudes Europeennes and at SAIS in Bologna, taught macroeconomics at the State University of Chernivtsi in Ukraine (1992-1993) and worked for five years in Bulgaria and Bosnia for NGOs and international organizations. He was director of the Lessons Learned Unit of the EU Pillar of the UN Mission in Kosovo (from 2001 to 2004).

Gerald wrote a book about post-socialist Bulgaria (CB Beck, Munich, 1996) and published many articles, including Travails of the European Raj on Bosnia (2003) and Member State Building and the Helsinki Moment on the EU role in the Balkans (2004).He co-authored 57 ESI reports since 1999, including Islamic Calvinists (2005) and most recently Sex and Power in Turkey (2007), as well as numerous scripts for TV documentaries on South East Europe. He is a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, of the advisory board of the European Policy Centre in Brussels and a 2007 Open Society Fellow. Since 2004 he lives in Istanbul.

European Stability Initiative (ESI) is a non-profit research and policy institute, created in recognition of the need for independent, in-depth analysis of the complex issues involved in promoting stability and prosperity in Europe. ESI was founded in July 1999 by a multi-national group of practitioners and analysts with extensive experience in the regions it studied.
ESI's experienced and multidisciplinary team is committed to provide policy makers with relevant strategic analysis.
In its eight years of operation, ESI has had a substantial impact on international policy towards South Eastern Europe. Its advice was sought regularly by a range of policy makers across the region.
In order to promote discussion and debate among the policy community all ESI publications are widely distributed and available on its website free of charge. ESI's efforts depend on the contributions of governments, corporations and private individuals to fund its activities.

"The Balkans are better than their reputation. In its eight years of operation the independent expert organization European Stability Initiative has evolved into a vibrant centre of excellence and has successfully rebutted some of the most persistent cliches.”
"In its eight years of operation, ESI has had a substantial impact on international policy towards South Eastern Europe", ESI writes about itself. True, says an insider who strongly praises the partly-deliberately provocative approach of ESI's work; It was high time the assessment of the situation should not be left to those diplomats who experience their duty tours in the Balkans as a 'disciplinary transfer'." Neue Zurcher Zeitung, 15 January 2008

Recent ESI publications on the Balkans:
- "On Mount Olympus. How the UN violated human rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina and why nothing has been done to correct it" (2007)
- "Cutting the Lifeline. Migration, Families and the Future of Kosovo" (2006)
- "Bosnia: post-industrial society and the authoritarian temptation" (2004)
- "The Lausanne Principle: Multiethnicity, Territory and the Future of Kosovo Serbs" (2004)
- "The Road to Thessaloniki: Cohesion and the Western Balkans" (2003)
- "Ahmeti's Village. The Political Economy Of Interethnic Relations In Macedonia" (2002)

March 13 (Thursady) 2008, 6.00 p.m.
Red hall
In English, no interpretation in Bulgarian provided.
Entrance: 2/1 BGN

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