Thyssen Lectures, 98 Seiten, dreisprachig (Englisch, Neugriechisch, Deutsch)

Verlag der Buchhandlung Klaus Bittner, Köln 2019, € 12,-

ISBN 978-3-926397-38-6

Three different versions of Europe constitute the one that we know today: the postwar Europe after 1945, the post-1968 Europe of human rights, and then the united Europe that emerged after the end of the Cold War. All three Europes are now cast into doubt. The first Europe, postwar Europe, is failing because memory of the war is fading and because it has contributed to a Europe incapable of defending itself. The second Europe, post-1968 Europe, is failing because it was the Europe of minorities; it’s still trying to find a way to address majorities‘ demand that their cultural rights should be protected, too, without turning democracy into instruments of exclusion. Post-1989 Europe is failing because Eastern Europeans no longer want to imitate the West and be judged by the West but rather want to build a counter-model. Do Europe’s failure mean that Europe is irrevocably falling apart?

With the „Thyssen Lectures“ the Fritz Thyssen Foundation is continuing a tradition that it initiated in Germany in 1979 and followed by venues at a series of universities in the Czech Republic, Israel, the Russian Republic and, most recently, in Turkey. The series in Greece is being organised for a period of four years under the leadership of Prof. Vassilios Skouris, former President of the European Court of Justice and current Director of the Centre of International and European Economic Law (CIEEL), and is dedicated to the framework topic of „the EU as a community of European law and values.

Ivan Krastev is the chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia and permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna. He is a founding board member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the Board of Trustees of The International Crisis Group and is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. In 2018-2019 Ivan is appointed as the Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress. His latest books in Englisch are „After Europe“ (UPenn Press, 2017); „Democracy Disrupted. The Global Politics on Protest“ (UPenn Press, 2014); „In Mistrust We Trust: Can Democracy Survive When We Don’t Trust Our Leaders?“ (TED Books, 2013). He is a co-author with Stephen Holmes of a book „The Light that Failed“ (with Penguin, 2019) on perils of the politics of imagination.