Europe’s Democracy in Deeper Danger

Within the EU, autocratic contagion, recently checked in Poland, has spread from Hungary to other neighbouring countries. Authoritarian populist parties of the Right have made gains at European and national levels and threaten to make more. Trump’s recent victory in the USA poses a lethal threat to America’s democracy, fractures Western support for Ukraine and borders on open collusion with Putin’s genocidal imperial aggression. The new UK government appears to understand the challenge, but Brexit and its legacy continue to hamper the response. For pro-Europeans in the UK, regaining the trust of Europe may have seemed the key condition for ending the blight of Brexit; now, the priority may shift towards urgent, committed solidarity with democratic Europe (and democrats worldwide) in the defence of Europe’s democracy.

Our three panellists each bring highly relevant insights, engagement and experiences to our discussion of this tangle of dangers.

Peter Geoghegan is an outstanding, award-winning Irish investigative journalist who has done groundbreaking work on the US-UK (and US-UK-Russian) nexus of dark money and oligarchic business power, notably as key drivers of Brexit.

Dr Nina Shengelia is in the forefront of citizen efforts, notably in the digital domain, to combat current Russian hybrid assaults on Georgia’s democracy and defend its geopolitical independence as a candidate for EU membership.

Wojciech Przybylski, a Polish political scientist and journalist is editor-in-chief of Visegrad Insight, a major investigative, reporting and analysis site for politics across the Central European countries.