The 2008 Summer School in Cortona provided a forum for discussions with leading scholars and policy makers on major current and future challenges facing the European
Union, in particular Germany and Poland. Discussions focused on actual and possible foreign policy strategies of the European Union, in particular toward countries beyond its Eastern border, and on problems of integration in European societies, in particular the integration of cultural differences.
Two seminars were offered, each one for two hours every workday.
1) On European Foreign Policies
The role of the European Union in the world; cooperation and competition between the European Union and the United States; possible expansion of the European Union to the East; European policies toward Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.
Chairs:
Bronislaw Geremek (Member
of the European Parliament, former
Polish Minister for Foreign Affairs,
Brussels/Warsaw) and
Markus Meckel (Member of the
German Parliament, former Minister
for Foreign Affairs of the GDR, Berlin)
Speakers:
Rainer Lindner (Stiftung
Wissenschaft und Politik/Foundation
for Science and Politics, Berlin)
Adam Daniel Rotfeld (Chairman
of the Polish-Russian Committee for
Difficult Problems, former Minister for
Foreign Affairs, Warsaw)
Anne-Marie Slaughter (Professor
of Politics and International Affairs,
Princeton University)
Lilia Shevtsova (Program Chair,
Russian Domestic Politics and
Political Institutions at the Carnegie
Endowment for Peace,
Moscow/Washington)
2) On the Integration of European Societies
Cohesive and centrifugal social forces in the EU; problems of social and cultural integration in Germany, Poland and in the EU in general; welfare state reforms; the role of religion and churches; consequences of demographic trends.
Chairs:
Marcin Król (Professor and
Dean, Department for Applied Social
Sciences, Warsaw University)
Claus Offe (Joint Professor,
Theories of the State, Hertie School
of Governance, Berlin)
Speakers:
Michal Boni (Chairman of the
Board of Advisors to the Polish Prime
Minister, former Minister for Social
Affairs, Warsaw)
Reiner Klingholz
(Berlin Institute for Population and
Development, Berlin)
Rainer Münz (Erste Bank,
Research and Development, Vienna)
The School was being organized by the Institute for Human Sciences/Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna in collaboration with and with the support of the
Robert Bosch Foundation, Stuttgart.
