We officially launched the 21st Visegrad Summer School, whose themes this year are: human rights, the future trajectory of the Visegrad Group and the skills of the future.
As part of the opening of this year’s edition of the School, a welcome word to the participants was addressed by Dominika Kasprowicz (Director of the Villa Decius Association), Henryk Woźniakowski (Polish philologist, representative of the Villa Decius Association, Katarzyna Piotrowska (Department of Culture and National Heritage of the City of Krakow). As part of the opening, the Director of Villa Decius read out welcome letters from the Marshal of the Malopolska Region – Witold Kozłowski – and from the Chairman of the Krakow City Council – Rafał Komarewicz.
The opening debate entitled: “Visegrad Group – Future Trajectories” was attended by representatives of the diplomatic corps of the V4 countries: Rastislav Káčer – Ambassador, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Slovakia, Márta Ritecz-Sekulic – Consul General of Hungary, Tibor Opěla – First Secretary of the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Warsaw, and on behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Rafał Domisiewicz – Head of the Western Europe Division in the Department of European Policy. The debate was moderated by Professor Zdzislaw Mach, Dean of the Faculty of International and Political Studies at Jagiellonian University.
Opening the debate, Professor Mach addressed a question to the panelists about the future of the Visegrad Group, in the context of the group itself and internal cooperation, as well as more broadly, referring the question to the cooperation of V4 countries within the European Union.
On that day, Professor Michal Vašečka – representative of the Slovak Republic at the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), Director of the Bratislava Policy Institute – gave a lecture, posing the difficult and challenging question to the participants, “Is there a future for human rights?”
As part of this year’s edition, participants will focus on futures literacy, a set of competencies for creating a vision of the future, developing alternative scenarios for it, or identifying the most desirable vision and the actions that will help make it a reality.
We would like to thank all the guests who accompanied us during the inauguration once again, and wish the participants fruitful days at Villa Decius.
The project would not be possible if not generously supported by the International Visegrad Fund, City of Krakow and the Malopolska Region, as well as our sponsors, neither without an expertise of our long term partners: Patricia Pászt from the Cracovia Express Foundation in Budapest, H.E. Michael Žantovski from the Vaclav Havel Library in Prague, Viera Žúborová from the Bratislava Policy Institute and Armelia Barçi from People in Focus in Albania. We would like to thank them all once again.
