Front page
The price of freedom
Agenda | 19/10/2009
Conclusions of the conference "Architects of the new Europe": the difficulties of consolidation
Milan Kucan, Vytautas Landsbergis and Mircea Snegur reflected on sovereignty and its construction in the conference “Architects of the new Europe”. All three agreed on the difficulties to consolidate projects for new states, although they gave different reasons
The founding presidents of Slovenia, Lithuania and Moldavia participated in the conference “Architects of the new Europe”, organized by the Centre d’Estudis de Termes Contemporanis in Barcelona. All three spoke in the central event of the conference, in the Palau de la Generalitat, on 7 October last.
Milan Kucan, who could not be present at the conference due to a pulmonary condition, offered a short video presentation of the process of Slovenian independence and an interesting reflection on the viability of the states in a context of growing interdependence and European integration. “Only those states willing to modernize will be able to ensure stable development and to exist for a long time”, declared Milan Kucan.
For his part, Vytautas Landsbergis offered a fierce defence of Lithuanian sovereignty, which he believes to be constantly threatened by Russian imperialism. He warned against “the realpolitik” which could lead Europe to sell its dignity and its values “in exchange for the price of gas”, and compared this situation with the Molotov-Ribentropp Pact of 1940, thanks to which the Soviet Union annexed the Baltic republics.
In turn, Mircea Snegur explained the process of independence of Moldavia and the problems of consolidating the new state “in difficult conditions” because Moscow encouraged the separatism of the Transnistria region. This ended up causing an armed conflict with some deaths which Snegur brands a “dark stain in the history of the young Moldavian state”. Even so, he maintained that “Moldavia has consolidated itself as a de jure, democratic state with a free market economy”.
Compartir
