Roundtable event: Czech Civil Society in Crisis Preparedness: Linking Bottom-Up Foresight with EU Priorities

The EU is evolving from a peace-and-prosperity project into a defence project – raising tough questions about how to build up both security and democracy.

On Thursday, 6 November, we presented our new report: “Democracies At War. War on Democracies” in Prague, outlining 4 major scenarios as a powerful framework for reimagining how Europe can protect democracy while strengthening its collective resilience and global influence.

The key takeaway from our lively discussion was that Europe’s strength lies not just in its armies, but in its active civil societies – from Ukraine to the Baltics and to Poland – proving that democracy itself is a form of defence.

This event was organised in cooperation with European Values at the European Values Summit, held on 5 November in Prague.This discussion was a part of the European Commission’s Citizens, Equality, Rights, and Values (CERV) programmes, and involved a Visegrad Insight-led 3-year engagement across Central and Eastern Europe: https://visegradinsight.eu/eu-values-foresight.