About the Event
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GLOBSEC Trends is a series of reports providing a unique insight into the trends in public attitudes in Central and Eastern Europe since 2016. GLOBSEC is an independent, non-partisan, non-governmental think tank based in Bratislava, committed to enhancing security, prosperity and sustainability in Europe and throughout the world. It has grown to become a key player in the field of monitoring and countering disinformation in Central and Eastern Europe, and its research is widely cited by leading independent media and high-level public officials. GLOBSEC has field offices in Kyiv/Ukraine and in Washington, DC.
Declining trends in democratic governance and growing illiberal populism continue across Europe, including in Central and Eastern Europe. It is further fueled by the Kremlin’s propaganda machine in the information space, working to alienate the public from transatlantic democratic values. While the Kremlin-led war in Ukraine witnessed unprecedented unity among EU member states and a coordinated approach on assistance and sanctions, the most recent GLOBSEC opinion polling documented in the GLOBSEC Trends shows, that the European unity is even more fragile and internal societal divisions have increased putting to a test societal resilience as the war continues. The 2023 Trends incorporates key findings from March 2023 public opinion poll surveys in eight countries: Bulgaria, Czechia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia.
Speakers
Damon Wilson is president and chief executive officer of the National Endowment for Democracy. Prior to joining NED, Mr. Wilson served as executive vice president at the Atlantic Council, as special assistant to the president and senior director for European affairs at the National Security Council (NSC), as executive secretary and chief of staff at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, and as deputy director in the private office of the NATO Secretary General. Mr. Wilson began his career with Save the Children in Rwanda. He is a graduate of Duke University and Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs.
Dominika Hajdu is the Democracy & Resilience Stream Director at GLOBSEC, which focuses on defending democracy against subversive efforts aiming to undermine it and at the examination of strategies, actors and tools utilized in information operations. In research, she focuses on the impact of information operations and social media on a democratic society; cognitive security; and strategic communication of the public sector. In her current capacity, she has led large-scale international projects focusing on research, awareness-raising and capacity-building for various target groups aiming to build societal and state resilience. In her previous capacities, Dominika gained experience working first in the advertising sector and later with the EU policy-making, having trained at the EU’s Committee of the Regions and worked for a public affairs agency in Brussels. Dominika holds an MA in EU Foreign Policy from the University of Leuven in Belgium.
Katarína Klingová is the Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Democracy & Resilience. Katarína is a Senior Research Fellow of the Centre for Democracy & Resilience at the GLOBSEC Policy Institute, an international think tank based in Bratislava. Since 2016 she has led research on information operations and hybrid threats, and capacity-building projects focusing on societal resilience, vulnerabilities of public administration, and strategic communication. In her previous capacities, she worked for Transparency International Slovakia and the European Commission. Holds an MA in Political Science with Specialization in Research Methodology and Social Analysis from the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary and an MA in European Studies from Comenius University in Bratislava.
Assia Ivantcheva (moderator) is the senior director for Europe at the National Endowment for Democracy. She brings twenty years of experience working in democracy and human rights around the world, with a focus on Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Prior to joining NED, Assia was a foreign service officer with USAID, leading teams in Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Serbia, and Montenegro. In her previous role as the senior adviser with the Elections and Political Transitions Division at USAID, she worked on political transitions in a variety of contexts. She has also served as deputy head of human rights at the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights in Warsaw, where she was responsible for policy and programs across 57 participating states. In that role, she also led the OSCE human rights defender network.
