Preparing and Shielding European Democracy. How to increase the EU’s Preparedness against Hybrid Threats?

A new era calls for a new coalition. Democracies need to talk to each other and figure out a more joint approach to foreign interference by ‘sharp power’: authoritarian regimes seeking to undermine our democracies from within by the weaponisation of everything.

Defend Democracy has therefore launched the Coalition for Democratic Resilience (C4DR), bringing together governments and civil society from current and future EU and NATO countries, who are all facing challenges of sharp power – also known as ‘hybrid threats’.

C4DR’s second conference Preparing and Shielding European Democracy is taking place in collaboration with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation in Brussels on Wednesday 4 December.

Background reading: Defend Democracy’s article about connecting the dots between the EU Commission’s European Democracy Shield and the European Preparedness Union.

Program

Preparing and Shielding European Democracy. How to increase the EU’s Preparedness against Hybrid Threats?

Welcome & introduction

  • Greta Kiss, Regional Project Manager, FNF Europe
  • Alice Stollmeyer, Founder & Executive Director, Defend Democracy
  • Jana Zikmundova, Chair Defend Democracy; Ambassador (ret.) to Ukraine

Panel 1: How to shield European democracy? Broadening the European Democracy Shield beyond disinformation (FIMI)

  • Jacob Tamm, Deputy Head of Division Strat.4, EEAS
  • Sophie Pornschlegel, Europe Jacques Delors
  • Cabinet member Commissioner McGrath / DG JUST (tbc)
  • moderator: Garvan Walshe, CEO Article 7 & Visiting Fellow Wilfried Martens Centre

Coffee break

Panel 2: How to build the EU’s preparedness? President Niinistö’s Preparedness Report and the European Preparedness Union

  • Hannah Neumann, MEP Greens/EFA, member AFET and SEDE
  • Maria Golub, Advisor, Verkhovna Rada (National Parliament of Ukraine)
  • Ruben Diaz-Plaja, Senior Policy Officer, SecGen Office, NATO HQ
  • moderator: Alice Stollmeyer, Founder & Executive Director, Defend Democracy

Closing words

This event is supported by: