Conferences and seminars

Panel I: Strategies to bring Democracy to Belarus: Moving from survival tactics to democracy promotion and high-impact diplomacy
This panel will examine the record of democracy movements and their international supporters in the former Czechoslovakia, Poland and Serbia, and their lessons for strategies in Belarus

Panel II: A European Democracy Foundation: A new model for democracy promotion and assistance
This panel will present the results of preliminary research on the priorities and actual funding allocations of four new EU member-states (Visegrad Four) in support of democratic movements and civil society in Belarus, Bosnia-and-Herzegovina, Cuba and Ukraine, and also their support to strengthen and deepen democracy in their neighbours. The panel will debate new directions for democracy promotion and assistance, in particular the formation of a European Democracy Foundation

George Soros, Zdeněk Bakala and Robert Amsterdam, lawyer of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, meet in Prague for PASOS debate on strengthening philanthropy in Central Europe

Policy centres from Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, South-Eastern Europe, and Central Asia met with international policy experts, western European think-tanks, representatives of Open Society Institute, the World Bank, and the German Marshall Fund of the United States for an international policy centres‘ meeting, incorporating the PASOS Assembly.

The Orange revolution in Kiev coincided with the founding Assembly of PASOS in Prague in December 2004, and led to the first public statement by PASOS, which urged the EU to open its doors to eventual membership for the Ukraine. On the first anniversary of the Orange revolution, PASOS held a roundtable debate in Prague in conjunction with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, to examine the lessons of transition of countries such as the new EU member-states, and ways that policy centres can work with other stakeholders to strengthen the democratic development of Ukraine and, when freedom comes, of Belarus.

The limits of EU enlargement and an assessment of the European Union‘s commitment to support democratisation and institutional reforms in Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia were among the themes debated by leading voices from think-tanks from Central and Eastern Europe at the PASOS annual policy centres meeting. The debate also looked at EU policies towards Russia and Belarus, and at EU foreign policy in a wider perspective.