Since the summer of 2021 the knowledge and experience borders in the media world of Central and Southeastern Europe have been virtually overcome by a regional cooperative outlet – Cross-border Talks (CbT). Born originally as a YouTube-published podcast, it grew into a five language site (in English, Polish, Czech, Romanian and Bulgarian) and a Substack newsletter that reflect on regional and international politics and social issues. It is a media meant to be mobilis in mobili (“moving within motion”/”changing with change”) in other words dynamic in the dynamic world in reference to Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo novel’s famous submarine, that allows its passengers to know the world and one another while having a rare, courageous and fruitful journey.
Originally Verne intended to define Captain Nemo as a Polish szlachta nobleman, but later he decided to erase any national or racial details about the mysterious character. Well, Cross-border Talks is also based legally in Poland (as it is being published by the progressive foundation Naprzod), but it is in reality an internationalist media, which aims to promote mutual acquaintance, insightful reflection and non-hegemonic communication in and on Central and Southeastern Europe – and beyond. Aware that the current polarisation within national borders aims to prevent change, we have defined ourselves as always having one foot outside the nations from which we come or with which we associate. In this way, Cross-border Talks is an effort to reflect on and promote progressive social change, cross-border living and citizen empowerment through experiences beyond national borders. It is also guided by fundamental human and progressive values, promoting trust and social capital and bridging the gaps and barriers between communities and people.
Cross-border Talks’ editorial team
Malgorzata Kulbaczewska-Figat is a former Polish foreign reporter specialising in Eastern Europe who speaks a number of European languages, including German, French, Ukrainian, Russian and Serbian, and understands a few more. After the start of the war in Ukraine, which she considers to be a huge and criminal mistake, she gave up regular reporting and started advising Eastern European, Asian and African migrants trying to solve various problems with the Polish state administration – temporary residence permits, legal work, family reunification, etc. Not wanting to break with journalism altogether, she has recently published a number of texts and interviews on the just transition of post-mining regions, mostly on CbT, but also in Krytyka Polityczna and Nasze Argumenty. A woman of steel, discipline and hard work, she has also built up a number of professional and personal relationships and friendships in Romania and Bulgaria in recent years, countries which she believes deserve not only greater media attention in Central Europe and beyond, but also recognition and respect for their complexity, ingenuity and efforts to grow from an unprivileged position.
Vladimir Mitev is a Bulgarian Romanian-speaking journalist, who is behind the CbT’s cross-border philosophy and who has been seeking to bridge the Bulgarian and the Romanian experience through his multilingual cross-border blog The Bridge of Friendship. Vladimir has worked or collaborated with a number of public and private media in Bulgaria and Romania, as well as with international progressive media in the USA (TheAnalysis.info), UK (Open Democracy), France (voxEurop, Courrier des Balkans), Italy (Other News, Osservatoria Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa), Hungary (Merce), Czech Republic (Argument), Croatia (Bilten), Iran (Iranian Labour News Agency, Mehr News), etc. He has been active as a Bulgarian-speaking expert on Romanian society and politics and Romanian-speaking expert on Bulgarian politics, giving interviews or collaborating with Digi24, Antena 3, Libertatea, Presshub, Revista 22, Radio România and other media in Romania and Bulgarian National Television, bTV, Nova TV, Darik Radio, Bulgarian National Radio, On Air TV, Sega, Mediapool, Marginalia and other media in Bulgaria. Vladimir speaks English, Romanian and Persian and has some knowledge of German and Russian. He believes in dynamic identity, which he defines as a form of existence in which different separate elements communicate with each other in a non-hegemonic way. He believes that the practice of dynamic identity could liberate the peripheral zones and the people of the periphery from their ordeal, as the bridge to others on equal terms is the bliss of the central zones of the world.
Veronika Sušová-Salminen is a Czech-Finnish journalist and historian with a PhD in historical anthropology from Charles University and a number of books and articles. She has researched Central Europe and Russia in the XIX and XX centuries, and her first book – on Putin’s Russia – was published in 2015. Veronika is also an authoritative voice in the field of decolonial studies and is the author of the study on the EU’s internal peripheries “100 shades of Europe”. When she is not reading, writing and researching, she lives in Finland with her husband and enjoys the pleasures of Finnish society and culture. Veronika is one of the two main editors of argument! Czech-Slovak online analytical portal, which is popular in the Czech Republic and Slovakia and is in touch with some of the most knowledgeable people in the two countries on domestic and foreign policy issues.
Cross-border Talks’ partnerships, topics and history
Cross-border Talks is an union of forces of the three journalists, described above, who are respectively the engines of Polish Nasze Argumenty progressive journal, the Bulgarian-Romanian blog The Bridge of Friendship and the Czech-Slovak argument! online portal. Cross-border Talks started as a biweekly podcast on international relations in 2021, but soon its site became the leading element of the endeavour, and in the end of 2022 its Substack newsletter was added.
Over the years, Cross-border Talks has offered regional expert perspectives on political developments and social issues in Central and Southeastern Europe. Thanks to Poland-based contributors Wojciech Łobodzinski and Francesco Trupia, it has reflected on major developments in Western European political life, the Israeli-Palestinian issue and the 2024 US presidential election. For some time, the Romanian trade union communicator Radu Stochiță hosted the “The United States of Labour” section on the labour movement in the USA, where he received his university degree. The prolific German writer and university professor Thomas Klikauer, who lives in Australia, was also a regular contributor with many reflections on the development of the extreme right in Germany. More recently, Romanians such as UK-based political scientist Vladimir Borțun, freelance journalist Andrei Gudu and film critic Lucian Țion have offered their views on the annulled Romanian presidential elections. We also enjoyed the collaboration of London-based Romanian anthropologist Smaranda Șchiopu, who gave us an insight into her research on cross-border life in the Ruse-Giurgiu region.
Cross-border Talks has followed the saga of the Schengen accession of Bulgaria and Romania, publishing on what could be called the European International of twin cities divided by an internal EU border (cross-border cities). It has shown an interest in labour issues, such as the strike at the famous Solaris bus factory in Poland or delivery workers, and the decolonial discussions of academics from the region, where our authors have been among the leading discussants. We have produced podcast episodes and analysis on key events related to Russia – such as the announcement of war in Ukraine or the death of Alexei Navalny. We have followed the political crisis in Bulgaria, which has seen its people vote for a parliament 7 times in 3 years. We interviewed a number of leading Romanian foreign policy experts. And we have heard the voices of influential Polish political scientists and activists.
Cross-border Talks has a number of informal media partnerships, such as with the US-based Independent Media Institute, which has excellent articles on the Global South that we syndicate. We have republished articles from liberal media in the region such as Presshub (Romania), Mediapool (Bulgaria) and others. We have also republished interviews from Iranian media with a former Iranian diplomat – Fereydoun Majlessi, who remains one of Iran’s foremost experts on relations with the US and Western Europe. Other News, Pressenza, voxEurope are other media whose content we have republished or collaborated with.
Partnership with transform! europe and grants for cross-border journalism on just transition in Central and Southeastern Europe
transform! europe
Between 2022 and 2024, the Cross-border Talks website was partly funded thanks to a grant from the European Parliament, which reached our media through our partnership with the transform! europe progressive network. The cooperation with the transform! europe circle started with their support for the translation and video editing work for our podcast and continued with our coverage of some of the network’s key events in different EU cities, for which travel and accommodation costs were covered.
Thanks to our partnership with transform! europe, we were able to host some of the European Left Party’s key MEPs on our podcast and cover some impressive events such as the 2023 International Feminist Conference in Warsaw. Our editor Veronika’s 100 Shades of Europe study on the EU’s internal peripheries was also well covered on our site.
JournalismFund Europe
In late 2024 and early 2025, our team worked on a JournalismFund Europe-funded cross-border journalism project on just transition in Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania and Bulgaria. We made a series of field visits – to Pernik, Stara Zagora (Bulgaria), Jiu Valley (Romania), Eastern Wielkopolska (Poland) and Most (Czech Republic). We also interviewed some of the key stakeholders or experts on just transition in these countries. The results of our work can be read here, as well as on a dedicated website called Found in Transition.
In previous years, Malgorzata and Veronika worked on another JournalismFund-funded project about the Turow mine on the border of Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany. They wrote a series of stories about the history of this mine and coal-fired power station project, the environmental issues, the economic importance, the political significance and the legal battles surrounding the mine.
BIRN
In 2023, Malgorzata and Vladimir visited the Jiu Valley coal-mining region in Romania for the first time, with a grant Malgorzata received from the Balkan Investigative Reporters’ Network. They spoke to NGO representatives, the former leader of the Planeta Petrila cultural movement Ion Barbu, the legendary trade unionist Catalin Cenușă, and reflected on the state of just transition at that moment.
Welcome 2025!
As of 1 January 2025, Cross-border Talks is an independent, multilingual, regional and cross-border media in Central and Southeastern Europe, fully self-funded by its editorial team in terms of costs for maintaining the website, various online platforms we use, and salaries for our staff. We still intend to apply for and receive grants for specific projects of cross-border journalism, should we have good ideas and time to realise them.
We have received positive feedback for our materials from both younger and older elites in Bulgaria and Romania. But our visibility on social media and our readership are still too small. We feel we need to expand our visual content and develop our YouTube channel and Substack newsletter. We are also in the process of officially launching a website for our Just Transition grant projects, called Found in Transition.
We believe in the dynamic identity of our region, Europe and the world. In other words, we believe that people matter and that the idea of their empowerment through cross-border living, awareness raising and community work, solidarity movements, sharing economy, digital activism, etc. is strong and should be applied. We are not satisfied with the tendency of Southeastern Europe to produce stabilocracies and static identities, nor with the tendency of Central Europe to polarise, stigmatise and eliminate undesirables. We support the challenge to the stabilocratic centres, because they are corrupt, stagnant and retrograde political forms that associate one or more parties with the states. But we also want to support the affirmation of the centre in our region against geopolitical and other polarisations. Growth, knowledge, skills and achievements should be democratically distributed and accessible to all, not just selected groups. Nor should they be weaponised in the never-ending polarisations. We need de-hegemony so that a number of our problems can be solved through normal dialogue.
We consider migrants coming to the EU via Turkey or Belarus as human beings with rights and dignity and not as “human weapons”. We also believe in the reduction of inequalities, the creation of a fairer balance of power in society, the democratisation of access to resources and the empowerment of people without resources in politics. There must be a way for our societies and their citizens to overcome the mechanism of dependency. And the way forward for us is through greater integration, synchronization, cooperation and trust, as opposed to the escalation of hostilities and war.
Finally, cross-border talks as an approach is a way for us to be in different places at the same time, to share experiences and to be enriched across borders. In the new era of Trump, let us choose to “make “the cross-border” great again”!
