Tartu, 17 March 2006 ( EuroCollege, University of Tartu Press Release website) – The EuroCollege, University of Tartu is pleased to invite you to participating in the international scientific conference: Promoting Democratic Values in the Enlarging Europe: The Changing Role of the Baltic States from Importers to Exporters taking place on the 5th and 6th of May, 2006, Tartu, Estonia. The conference is organised by the EuroCollege, University of Tartu.
The aim of our conference is to facilitate the learning process of democratisation in Post-Soviet societies using the experience gained in the Baltic States during the last 15 years of national independence. The conference will open up new ways to a deeper understanding of the transformation of CIS countries on their difficult path to democracy and the rule of law.
In the early 1990s Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were among the countries embracing the challenge of entering the community of democratic Western states. Having successfully imported both the democratic values and parliamentary institutional settings the Baltic States are now in the truly unique position of building bridges to neighbouring East European nations like Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia, finding themselves under less favourable conditions but striving for implementing the values and the institutions indispensable to liberty and democracy.
The key-note speakers of the conference are Gyorgy Schopflin, Member of the European Parliament, Hungary and Jim Cloos, General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union, Luxembourg.
The Conference is organised in four panels.
Panel I: EU Conditionality as the Democratisation Force
Chair: Paul Goble, University of Tartu, Estonia
Panel II: Baltic States’ Internal Challenges of Democratisation
Chair: Kristi Raik, Finnish Institute of International Affairs, Finland
Panel III: Applicability of Democratisation Experience
Chair: Rasma Karklins, University of Illinois, Chicago, USA
Panel IV: Expectation and Needs towards Democratisation in EU Eastern Neighbourhood
Chair: Ghia Nodia, Caucasus Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development
The Registration deadline is April 3, 2006. The conference fee is 30 EUR, for students 10 EUR. For current updates about the conference, please visit the web page of our conference at: http://ec.ut.ee/conf06/
Please feel free to share this invitation with your colleagues, friends, as well as with your students.
