The great work of unification is increasingly showing cracks and fissures: how will Europe emerge from the crisis?
Thursday, 01. October 2015, 18:30 – 20:00 h
At the University of Zurich, Rämistrasse 71, 8006 Zurich, KOL-G-201 (Aula)
Europe is under pressure. The great work of unification, which has been persistently pursued since the end of the Second World War, is increasingly showing cracks and fractures. What would have been hard to imagine just a few years ago has become a reality: Relations with neighbouring Russia are difficult and unpredictable. Old and new rivalries and conflicts are coming to light. Where do we go from here? What policy of understanding will help in the crisis? What is to be hoped for, what is to be feared? A very experienced politician gives his opinion.
Dr. Wolfgang Schüssel, born in 1945, was Austrian Federal Chancellor from 2000 to 2007 and in this capacity President of the EU Council in the first half of 2006. From 1989 to 2000, as Minister of Economics and Minister of Foreign Affairs, he was largely responsible for Austria's accession to the European Union. His time as Federal Chancellor included the introduction of the euro, the pension reform, the reduction of the national debt, the privatisation of nationalised industry, the new severance pay, the new child benefit and the restitution payments to the victims of National Socialism. From 1979 to 2011 Wolfgang Schüssel was a member of the National Council. Today, as President of the Austrian Society for Foreign Policy and the United Nations (ÖGAVN), he devotes himself to Austrian foreign relations, in particular European financial and economic policy. He is a member of the board of trustees of the Bertelsmann Foundation and of the supervisory board of the German energy company RWE AG.