Talk by Song Lilei (Shanghai) EU Strategic Autonomy: Views and Stances of the Visegrad Countries

On 16 June 2023 we will welcome Song Lilei together with the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies and the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies to our Regensburg Panel. She will give a lecture on "EU Strategic Autonomy: Views and Stances of the Visegrad Countries". The lecture will be held in English.

Abstract:

Strategic autonomy of the European Union has been a long-sought strategic goal of the EU. It has made a number of advances in several areas, including defence, economics and technology. As new members of the EU, the V4 countries are more concerned with political issues conducive to their own development than with the interests of the EU, which makes them more interested in developing interdependencies with countries outside the EU and therefore less likely to contribute to the EU's strategic autonomy in general. Given that Visegrad cooperation has always been linked to external factors, it remains to be seen whether the debate on the EU's strategic autonomy is an opportunity to strengthen V4 cooperation or another challenge to weaken it. The EU's strategic autonomy is still a work in progress, both in concept and in practice, and it is an excellent challenge for the EU to make it a reality. The different attitudes of the V4 countries to the question of EU strategic autonomy show that the realisation of strategic autonomy ultimately depends on the development of European integration, the most important of which is a unified EU policy.

Song Lilei: Professor at School of Political Science and International Relations, Deputy Director of European Research Center, Researcher of German Research Center of Tongji University. For more details see.