Foto: LATO

Video from the Riga conference 2015 conversation on the existential crisis of the European Union caused by the current migration flows.

Struggling to keep up with and accommodate the influx of refugees from war-torn Syria, Hungary decided to build a wall on its Serbian border. Shortly after, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and others Schengen Member States started ‘temporarily’ closing their borders. These are all borders that were opened just 25 years ago, after decades of strict regulation.

These are some of the questions addressed by Dace Akule, Director of the Centre for Public Policy PROVIDUS, and Roland Freudenstein, Deputy Director and Head of Research at the Wilfred Martens Centre for European Studies. The coffee break conversation Keeping strong internally through external borders took place on 7 November, in the Riga conference 2015.

The Riga Conference is an annual meeting of regional and international experts in foreign policy and defence, academics, journalists, and business representatives, promoting the discussion and assessment of issues affecting the transatlantic community. Convening in the Latvian capital since 2006, the conference has become a recognized annual tradition in the region.

The event is organized by the Latvian Transatlantic Organisation in cooperation with Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Latvian Ministry of Defence.

All videos of the public conversations of the Riga conference 2015 are available here. For more information about the forum, please visit the dedicated website.