"Central European Futures: Five Scenarios for 2025" lays out five major scenarios that could dramatically alter the shape of Central Europe, and Europe at large, over the coming years. As this key region faces more uncertainty than ever, Visegrad Insight and The German Marshall Fund of the United States have engaged a new generation of thinkers and leaders from Central Europe to map key political, socioeconomic, and international trends, identify midterm dynamics and trajectories, and draw policy recommendations to key stakeholders in the region, Europe, and the transatlantic community. The report has been presented publicly in over 60 events across the Atlantic through public debates in the region and closed-door consultations with the administration and lawmakers in Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, the USA, Germany, France and in the EU Commission. It serves as a map of potential political events and strategic decisions to be taken with respect to Central Europe and Europe overall.

Authors of the report: Mr Wojciech Przybylski (Res Publica Foundation, Visegrad Insight, Warsaw) and Dr Joerg Forbrig (German Marshall Fund of the U.S., Berlin).

The Chair for this event will be: Professor Timothy Garton Ash (St Antony's College, Oxford).

Wojciech Przybylski is the editor-in-chief of Visegrad Insight and chairman of Res Publica Foundation in Warsaw, a media think tank developing trans-national civil society in CEE. Previously he has been the editor-in-chief of Eurozine - a Vienna based magazine with a European network of cultural journals, and a Polish quarterly Res Publica Nowa. He leads the 'New Europe 100' network of successful digital age leaders from CEE across the fields of business, research media, NGO and public administration, and serves as a member of the advisory board of the European Forum of New Ideas and the European Digital Forum.
Mr. Przybylski has been a lecturer at the Warsaw University, a guest lecturer at Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Budapest and a junior research fellow at CEFRES in Prague. His expertise includes European foreign policy and political culture. He has been published in Foreign Policy, Project Syndicate, Politico Europe, Journal of Democracy, EUObserver, VoxEurop, Hospodarske noviny, Internazzionale, Zeit, Gazeta Wyborcza and several others. In 2017, Mr. Przybylski co-edited a Routledge book 'Understanding Central Europe'.

Dr Joerg Forbrig is a senior transatlantic fellow for Central and Eastern Europe, and director of the Fund for Belarus Democracy. Based in GMF's office in Berlin, he leads the organization's efforts to assist civil society in Belarus, while his analytical and policy work focuses on Europe's East broadly, including the new member countries of the European Union and the EU's Eastern neighborhood.
Prior to joining GMF in 2002, Forbrig worked as a Robert Bosch Foundation fellow at the Center for International Relations in Warsaw, Poland.
He has been published widely on democracy, civil society, and Central and Eastern European affairs, including the books Reclaiming Democracy (2007), Prospects for Democracy in Belarus (2006), and Revisiting Youth Political Participation (2005). He is also a regular contributor to major international media, including op-eds in The New York Times, Financial Times, CNN, Politico, EU Observer, Neue Züricher Zeitung, and Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Forbrig has studied political science, sociology, and Eastern European affairs at universities in Germany, Poland, and Hungary. He holds a PhD in social and political sciences from the European University Institute in Florence and a master’s in political science from Central European University in Budapest. He speaks English, Russian, Polish, and Slovak in addition to his native German.

Please email: european.studies@sant.ox.ac.uk in order to register in advance to attend this event.