Dealing with the Past while Looking to the Future

International conference, part of the presidential initiative 25 years free Bulgaria

Guests

Guests:

Craig Kennedy, Monica Luisa Macovei, Istvan Gyarmati, Daniel Daianu, Ion Sturza, Ivan Krastev, Nickolay Mladenov, Georgi Pirinski, Meglena Kuneva, Daniel Valchev, Aleksander Smolar, Juraj Bayer.

Stjepan Mesic (President of Croatia 2000-2010), Amb. Aleksandar Pejovic (Chief negotiator for Montenegro), Milorad Pupovac (President of the Serb National Council), Jorge Fuentes Monzonis-Villalonga (Spanish Ambassador to Bulgaria 1993-97), Jerzy Pomianowski (Executive Director of the European Endowment for Democracy), Goran Svilanovic (Secretary General of the Regional Cooperation Initiative), Kristof Bender (European Stability Initiative), Ján Čarnogurský (Prime Minister of Slovakia /1991 – 1992/ and chairperson of the Christian Democratic Movement), as well as Vedran Dzihic (Institute for Political Science in Vienna), Janusz Bugaijski, Stephan Grand, Jovan Teokarevic, Nina Khrushcheva, Elena Nemirovskaya, etc.

Participants from Bulgaria will include the entire NGO spectrum, political advisors and analysts, former and acting politicians, including: MFA Daniel Mitov and MoD Todor Tagarev, MEPs Andrey Kovatchev and Maria Gabriel, Avgustina Tzvetkova (former Bulgarian Minister of Defence), Ivan Sirakov (Bulgarian Ambassador to Slovenia), Konstantin Dimitrov (Bulgarian Ambassador to the UK), Tatiana Levcheva (EEAS), Stefan Tafrov (Permanent Representation of Bulgaria to the UN 2001-2006), etc.

Chaired by

The conference is a part of the initiative 25 Years Free Bulgaria, under the auspices of the President of Bulgaria Rosen Plevneliev

The conference takes place within the initiative “25 Years Free Bulgaria” that marks the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The initiative includes more than 120 events across the country and is carried out under the auspices of the Bulgarian President Plevneliev. The initiative committee, in turn, includes two former Bulgarian Presidents, former ministers, politicians, intellectuals and public figures of all walks of life.

The past year of protests in Bulgaria and the attentive audience that emerged as a result created a window of opportunity that contributed to the gradual expansion of the initiative to its current magnitude. The ambition of this initiative is while marking the anniversary, to take another step towards restoring trust in the Bulgarian society, which has hardly been more polarized and deprived of a tangible perspective for national consensus.