Press releases

What Does the World Economic and Financial Crisis Mean for Security in the West?

The opening discussion of this year’s Conference was “What Does the World Economic and Financial Crisis Mean for Security in the West?” The vice-chair of the Reflection Group on the Future of Europe (2020-2030), Prof. Dr. Vaira Vike-Freiberga, the Prime Minister of the Republic of Latvia, Mr. Valdis Dombrovskis, the director of Studies at the Institute for Higher National Defence Studies, Prof. Michel Foucher, Chairman of Baltic Development Forum, Mr. Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, and the holder of the Zbigniew Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Geostrategy, Dr. Simon Serfaty, took part in this discussion. The discussion was led by Robert Cottrell, the editor of TheBrowser.com.

The panel pointed on the fact that the financial crisis and its impact on the security in the West can be discussed from different angles. Dr. Vaira Vike-Freiberga and Mr. Valdis Dombrovskis agreed that cooperation is essential for the security in the West. Professor Michel Foucher indicated that the West is facing budgetary problems and it has an impact also on the security of the West. Now the Western countries have to explain to the societies why they need so enormous defense budgets and why they have to go to other countries and secure them with the money from the West. Before the crisis these questions where not so actual. Mr. Uffe Ellemann-Jensen paid his attention to the fact that the international system is facing a shift of powers and that the United Nations should meet some changes, if we look at the countries who have rights of veto in the United Nations. Mr. Ellemann-Jensen remarked that the EU lacks not only the quality to speak with one voice. And when talking about Turkey he pointed on the arrogance of the EU. Dr. Simon Serfaty said that the crisis in the West is not at its end, therefore the question “What Does the World Economic and Financial Crisis Mean for Security in the West?” cannot be answered yet, but the crisis is a good argument for the state governments to say that we do not want to spend money on Afghanistan and etc. Dr. Serfaty said that the EU is living trough many crisis – institutional, demographical political, strategically and etc.

The discussion of the Rīga Conference is continued by Presidents of three Baltic States and President of Poland in the second panel of the Conference “Baltic Sea Region after Crises: What Next?”.

The Rīga Conference 2010 is organized by the Latvian Transatlantic Organisation (LATO) in cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia and the Ministry of Defence of Latvia as well as supported by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, NATO, Soros Foundation – Latvia, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, European Commission Representation in Latvia and the Embassy of the United States in Riga, Informative support is ensured by LETA, DELFI un Latvijas Avīze.

Photos of the Conference are available at LATO Photo Album.