In this Inside Brussels podcast, John Richardson, GMF Senior Advisor and previously with the European Commission, sheds some light on the Lisbon Treaty and its consequences for both the internal and external workings of the European Union.
On January 28, GMF's Berlin office hosted the Independent Commission on Turkey for a presentation and discussion of its recent report, "Turkey in Europe: Breaking the Vicious Circle". The event featured Martti Ahtisaari, Nobel Peace Laureate of 2008 and former President of Finland; Emma Bonino,Vice President of the Italian Senate and former European Commissioner; Hans van den Broek, former Foreign Minister of the Netherlands and former European Commissioner; and Albert Rohan, former Secretary General at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Austria. Karl-Heinz Klär, State Secretary of Federal and European Affairs of Rhineland-Palatinate, provided introductory remarks.
On January 25, GMF's Climate & Energy program with the Embassy of Spain, hosted an event on Capitol Hill entitled "Decoding the Copenhagen Accord & Charting the Course Ahead." The event featured Teresa Ribera Rodriguez, Secretary of State for Climate Change, Spain; Luis Alfonso de Alba, Special Ambassador for Climate Change, Mexico; and Jonathan Pershing, Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Change, United States. GMF's Climate & Energy Program Director Cathleen Kelly and Spanish Ambassador Jorge Dezcallar de Mazarredo provided opening remarks. Nigel Purvis, Senior GMF Fellow and President of Climate Advisers moderated the discussion.
To watch the Clean Skies analysis of this event, please click here.
The German Marshall Fund is currently accepting entries for the eleventh annual Peter R. Weitz Journalism Prize for outstanding and original coverage of transatlantic and European issues and events by the American media. The prize is open to all professional journalists covering European issues for a U.S. publication, regardless of citizenship.
As the Obama administration finalizes its new policy in Afghanistan and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown prepares to host an international conference on Afghanistan, the German parliament confronts a key vote on the country's commitment to the war. With growing public concern in both the United States and Germany, GMF is sponsored an America Abroad Media town hall event with German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg and U.S. Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Ambassador Richard Holbrooke discussing the critical issues affecting Afghanistan, NATO, and the transatlantic alliance.
To watch highlights and discussion from the event, please click here.
In light of the upcoming conference in London on Afghanistan, GMF has compiled its Afghanistan-related events, multimedia, and publications. Please click here to see what GMF has contributed to the policy debate over the past several years.
In a GMF video feature, Senior Fellow Dan Twining explains the importance of the Afghanistan conference on January 28, and the key topics shaping the discussion. Click here to watch his commentary.
On January 20, Carl Bildt, Swedish Foreign Minister; Sergey Markedonov, Director of the Department for Problems of Ethnic Relations at the Institute for Political and Military Analysis in Moscow; and GMF Executive Director Ron Asmus participated in a discussion about the war in Georgia and a new book on the same subject titled, A Little War that Shook the World: Georgia, Russia, and the Future of the West. Audio and video from this event can be found below.
A summary of the book and its public reception can be found here.
In November 2009, GMF and the Government of Canada welcomed over 300 leaders in government, academia, business, and journalism to Halifax, Nova Scotia, for the first major international security conference in North America. Please click here to view a photo essay of the three-day forum.
On January 13, GMF and the British Council co-hosted an event titled “The Effect of Immigration on Society.” The event was planned exclusively for alumni of both organizations’ leadership development programs. The evening opened with a presentation by GMF’s Delancey Gustin highlighting some of the findings of the recent Transatlantic Trends: Immigration public opinion survey. This overview was followed by thoughtful reactions from respondents Juan Carlos Lara-Armienta, Peter MacLeod, and Rabah Ghezali. Following their remarks, the speakers generated a lively discussion focused on the effect of immigration on society, the commonly-held perceptions of immigrants in various countries, and the governmental methods of handling of immigration.
James T. Kolbe, senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, has been appointed to the Advisory Committee of the Export-Import Bank of the United States for 2010. The committee provides the Export-Import Bank with expert guidance from various sectors of the economy to strengthen its support of U.S. exports.
GMF launches new analysis series, Focus on Ukraine, about Ukraine's 2010 presidential election. GMF will provide regular analysis briefs by leading American and European writers and intellectuals framing the developments in Ukraine into a transatlantic and international context.
Mike Abramowitz, director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's Committee on Conscience and a former reporter and editor at The Washington Post, has joined the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) as a non-resident Fellow. He will focus on ethnic and religious conflicts, with an emphasis on post-conflict reconciliation efforts, and will study U.S. and European responses to cases of genocide and mass atrocities.
On December 10, German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) Director for Central and Eastern Europe Pavol Demeš was awarded with the South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO) Human Rights Award 2009, highlighting Demeš’ significant contributions to democratic reform, civil society development, and the integration of the entire Southeast and Central European region into European and transatlantic structures.
GMF releases new analysis piece for its On Turkey series examining Turkey's EU candidacy. GMF provides regular analysis briefs by leading Turkish, European, and American writers and intellectuals, with a focus on dispatches from on-the-ground Turkish observers.
GMF is now on Twitter! Feel free to subscribe at http://twitter.com/gmfus or @gmfus. GMF will post updates of podcast, publications, and other content to Twitter in addition to here on http://www.gmfus.org.
In 2008 and 2009, the Balkan Trust for Democracy supported the Balkan Community Initiatives Fund program for Youth and Media. This program offers young people in the Balkan region the opportunity to learn about journalism which engages them in their communities and gives them opportunities for employment.
On Saturday, German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung published an Op-ed by Ron Asmus entitled "The imperialists from Moscow". The article looks back at the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia, trying to identify possible reasons for and consequences of it. Asmus argues that the Georgia war of August 2008 was a little war by the standards of modern warfare, but it shook the world and brought Russia and the West to the brink of a new cold war.
Who are the misers and who are the gold-diggers among the EU's 27 member states? Some are Gold Diggers, happy to reap the benefits of integration and let others pick up the tab. Others are Misers – fans of budget discipline and a smaller CAP, but keen to claim compensation for their net balance deficits. Others still are Fence-Sitters: quick to pay lip service to the idea of budgetary discipline, they are still keen to maintain CAP spending levels.
That is the conclusion of a new paper analysing the EU member states' responses to the “fundamental” review of the EU budget, which the European Commission launched in 2007.
Authors from the Ecologic Institute lay out a roadmap for the United States and European Union to transition to a clean energy economy and protect the climate. The roadmap calls for policymaking that drives investment in clean energy technologies at an annual level of $1 trillion by 2026, much of which will come from the private sector.
The incoherence of the EU's approach to Ukraine has pushed Ukraine to believe the European Union has lost interest in the country. Ukraine's leadership blames the EU for closing the door. The European Union, in turn, blames Ukrainian leaders for their lack of political will to reform and to act on promises made after the Orange Revolution.
On January 28, GMF's Berlin office hosted the Independent Commission on Turkey for a presentation and discussion of its recent report, "Turkey in Europe: Breaking the Vicious Circle". The event featured 
As the Obama administration finalizes its new policy in Afghanistan and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown prepares to host an international conference on Afghanistan, the German parliament confronts a key vote on the country's commitment to the war. With growing public concern in both the United States and Germany, GMF is sponsored an America Abroad Media town hall event with German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg and U.S. Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Ambassador Richard Holbrooke discussing the critical issues affecting Afghanistan, NATO, and the transatlantic alliance. 
In light of the upcoming conference in London on Afghanistan, GMF has compiled its Afghanistan-related events, multimedia, and publications. Please click .jpg)
In 2008 and 2009, the Balkan Trust for Democracy supported the Balkan Community Initiatives Fund program for Youth and Media. This program offers young people in the Balkan region the opportunity to learn about journalism which engages them in their communities and gives them opportunities for employment. 
