Czech Foreign Minister K. Schwarzenberg, FNF Representative B. Severa, former Foreign Minister Genscher and former Czechoslovak foreign minister J. Dienstbier in a friendly conversation in Prague (f.l.)

Central Europe and the Baltic States

Since the region’s political changes, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom (FNF) has been assisting, in an advisory capacity, liberal parties, think tanks and NGOs in Central Europe and the Baltics. The FNF project office in Prague is responsible for the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. A summary of the Foundation’s recent activities in these countries is below.

Although all eight countries share a common communist past and joined the European Union together on May 1, 2004, their political, social and economic development still differ greatly. For instance, only Slovenia, Slovakia and Estonia have so far introduced the common European currency, the euro. Furthermore, the global financial crisis hit all of the sub-region’s countries hard, with the exception of Poland, and blocked the now incipient process of consolidating economic and democratic and economic development in Central Europe and the Baltics. The crisis was severe enough in some countries to trigger not only economic but also social, inner-party and political upheavals. All eight countries continue to need the active support of a liberal foundation to proceed on their way to becoming fully functional European democratic states, because the process of institutionalizing democracy is not yet complete.

Our efforts are thus focused not only on local or regional issues, but also on issues relevant for the whole sub-region from a liberal point of view.
In order to promote the development of civil society in the sub-region, one of the Foundation’s main goals in all eight states is to transmit liberal values and stress the importance of Europe as a community of values. Another focus of FNF’s education and advice are the concepts created with its local partners to combat regressive tendencies in state and society. This applies especially to the re-appearance of a strengthened, burgeoning nationalism. Some of FNF’s most important allies in supporting liberal reform efforts in the sub-region are a number of renowned liberal think tanks. They have formed a cross-border network at the initiative of the FNF and now cooperate closely.