Cross-border Talks’ online presence
Cross-border Talks (site)
Cross-border Talks’ recommended resources
Research and conceptual materials
A new Europe will be born in the periphery? 100 Shades of the EU (This special episode of Cross-Border Talks is devoted to an outstanding study prepared under the auspices of transform!europe – Hundred Shades of the EU — Mapping the Political Economy of the EU Peripheries. We invited two of three co-authors of the book: historian and journalist Veronika Susova-Salminen and economist Giuseppe Celi to speak about European South and East)
Life without armour and non-hegemonic foreign policy: a proposal for change in Bulgaria and its region (Vladimir Mitev’s vision for progressive transformation in Southeastern Europe, based on citizens’ empowerment and synchronization between people of the region)
Vladimir Mitev: Cross-border media in Three Seas Initiative region could offer a path out of polarization (Cross-border Talks’ founder at the Three Seas Initiative Summit 2023 in Bucharest)
Cross-border journalism projects on green and just transition
Lost Opportunity for a Just Transition: the Case of Turów Lignite Mine (a Jurnalismfund.eu-supported cross-border journalism series)
The green transition in the Jiu Valley in Romania (a 2023 cross-border journalism project, supported by the Balkan Investigative Reporters’ Network)
War in Ukraine
Victory Day is international heritage. It does not belong to Putin (Małgorzata Kulbaczewska-Figat: “What could I wish to us all in Central and Eastern Europe on the Victory Day? First and foremost, peace. And second, that one day we would all conmemorate the end of WW2, understand its meaning, honour the victims and the fallen – and not use the day for short-term political propaganda”)
Why Russia’s political capitalists went to war – and how the war could end their rule (Russia’s political capitalists waged war in order to survive as a class, to continue accumulating wealth through the exploitation of the state – says Volodymyr Ishchenko, a research associate at the Institute of East European Studies, Freie Universität Berlin in an interview for Cross-border Talks’ Małgorzata Kulbaczewska-Figat. – However, this war, depending on what happens on the battlefield, may equally bring about a fall or a radical transformation of the whole post-Soviet order. )
After the war, Ukrainian workers will never agree again to be exploited (On 21 February 2023, Yuriy Samoylov, chairman of the Independent Miners’ Trade Union in the city of Kryvyi Rih, visited Warsaw. The meeting hosted by Inicjatywa Pracownicza (Workers’ Initiatve) trade union and by International Labour Network of Solidarity and Struggles, attended by labour activists and people of Ukrainian diaspora, was the first from the series of meetings)
Yanina Korniienko: Journalism affirms democratic values in war-ridden Ukraine (Yanina Korniienko is an Ukrainian journalist at the investigative site Slidstvo. In an interview for both Bulgarian National Radio and Cross-border Talks she speaks about the accomplishments of Slidstvo with regards to anti-corruption and improper things, related to army procurement and war issues. Korniienko also explains what are the risks for journalists in today’s Ukraine and how her site remains viable financially and editorially independent. Finally, she claims that journalism is an agent of change in today’s Ukraine, affirming democratic values in society)
EU’s cross-border life
Michael Kurzwelly: The Real Europe exists in Borderlands (By the end of October 2022, Cross-Border Talks team took part in Transbordering Laboratory – a conference in Slubice and Frankfurt (Oder). The event, held in Polish-German borderland, hosted representatives of a dozen of other transborder city pairs and included an exhibition centered around the concept of cross-border space. Also, its aim was to create a network of transborder city organisms, to exchange experiences and promote cooperation everywhere in Europe. One of the city presentations, co-authored by Vladimir Mitev, featured Ruse and Giurgiu)
The Bulgarian-Romanian mini-Schengen area as a project for change in Southeastern Europe (The proposal for elimination of border controls between Romania, Bulgaria and Greece might have a difficult juridical side and to not have strong political support by the three countries. But its spirit already sets actions and change in motion in Southeastern Europe, writes Vladimir Mitev for the EUXGLOB 2023 conference of the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca)
Feminism
Ewa Majewska: Genuine feminism is about challenging society’s “natural” order (The Polish feminist and member of the scientific committee of Marxist Feminist conference, which took place between 16 and 18 November 2023 in Warsaw spoke to Cross-border Talks about her understanding of feminism, which differs from liberal feminism. She shared her expectation regarding women’s rights in Poland after the October 2023 parliamentary elections, which hint a liberal-leaning government is possible. And then went on to discuss being feminist in the Middle East – the Iranian “Women. Life. Freedom” protest movement, the concept of Islamic feminism and the contribution of the Rojawa social model to feminist theory)
Impressions of sisterhood. On the 5th Marxist-Feminist Conference, Warsaw 2023 (Between 16 and 18 November 2023, Warsaw was the capital of world social and Marxist feminism: hundreds of women from all around the world gathered to discuss political theory and praxis, exchange experiences, research results and free thoughts. Women of the North and the South, East and West, all adhering to common values of liberty, equality and human rights, looked for most efficient strategies to claim equal rights in a more just world. Spirit of sisterhood was truly in the air)
A protest against domestic violence and for women’s rights in Sofia: voices of Bulgarian activists and refugee women come united (video from the December 2022 protest in the capital of Bulgaria with English-language subtitles)
Lea Vajsova: There is a boom of feminist organizations in Bulgaria after the debate on the ratification of the Istanbul Convention (We saw the conservative insistence on the “traditional Christian family” around the Istanbul Convention debate as a metaphor behind which a process of re-traditionalisation was taking place as an effect of dismantling the welfare state, which plays (and played before 1989 in socialist Bulgaria) a significant role in terms of achieving women’s emancipation and socio-economic equality. At the same time, no voices were clearly heard speaking about socio-economic inequalities through a feminist perspective – says Lea Vajsova, a senior assistant at Sofia University, sociologist and member of left-wing feminist collective LevFem)
Rana Soleimani: Iranian female intellectuals have prepared the soil for the ongoing feminist revolution (Interview with the Iranian writer, living in Sweden about the current protests in Iran and about the importance of literature and feminism for their resilience)
Migration
Ahlam Chemlali: On migration issues, the EU still relies on deportations, detentions and agreements with unsafe third countries (Ahlam Chemlali, migration researcher in Danish Institute for International Studies, joins Cross-Border Talks to discuss the EU’s migration policy, which, in her view, is fundamentally wrong and has already started to backfire. Forging ‘partnerships’ on migration control with authoritarian leaders like Recep Tayyip Erdogan gives these non-democratic leaders to blackmail the EU: give more, or we send all migrants to your border. Agreements with states in deep crisis, like Tunisia, are counterproductive as well: they do not help such states to overcome internal difficulties, give a green light to detaining people who have committed no crime, and encourage desperate migration rather than contribute to keeping people in their state of origin. The EU has an example of succesful migration and integration policy, and this was the welcoming of Ukrainian refugees by the member states after 24 February 2022. However, the expert says, the EU prefers to stick to discriminatory and isolation policies towards other migrants, generating social tensions instead of preparing ground for succesful integration)
Maria Cheresheva: Bulgarians who try to help migrants are accused of smuggling (Maria Cheresheva – a Bulgarian freelance journalist who has documented abuses along the Balkan migration route to Western Europe via Bulgaria – spoke to Cross-border Talks about her findings. She has discovered black sites where migrants are held illegally. She is aware of a massive trend of systematic beatings and violence on the Bulgarian border with Turkey. The situation along the Balkan migrant route is very dynamic and has changed drastically over the years, Cheresheva says. The fence that has been built on the Bulgarian-Turkish border is easy to cross with the help of smugglers. At the same time, there are no legal ways for migrants to enter and cross Bulgarian territory. Nobody is allowed by the Bulgarian authorities to apply for asylum in an official and legal way. Cheresheva explains that Bulgaria is following the example of Greece, where migrant rights activists are pushed away from the border areas)
So far, Romania experienced mainly migration to the West. Now foreign workers are coming to the country (In theory, the migrant workers should have the rights that a Romanian worker has. But over the last 10-20 years, workers’ rights have been eroded and only recently, started regaining some of their strength. In practice, workers feel some pressure not to speak up when there is a workplace accident, when they are overworked, when they are not paid enough – says Radu Stochita, Romanian journalist and trade union activist)
Our authors
Wojciech Albert Łobodziński
Gaza: more than hundred days of genocide
What will be the fate of agriculture in Europe?
Francesco Trupia
The EU’s Fatigue, eastward (On March 31, 2024, Bulgaria and Romania became Schengen members: Bulgarians and Romanians can now go straight to their gates at the airport and skip any visa or passport control, even at sea border checkpoints. Yet they must take the bitter with the sweet as Austria’s opposition to full membership halts their free movement across EU lands. As Aleksandar Hemon would argue here, Bulgarians and Romanians are now close enough to being (in) Europe to fail perpetually at being Europeans)
Smaranda Schiopu
Border-free experiments in Europeanisation: The borders opened for Europe
Border-free experiments in Europeanisation: The borders opened for Europe [PART TWO]
Thomas Klikauer
Farmers’ Protests in Germany: not only about fuel, diesel and taxes
