Aznar closes the FAES-EIN seminar on nationalism, populism and Transatlantic relations

28/03/2014

    _ Forty personalities—scholars, think tank members, MEPs and American executives amongst others—took part in the sessions

José María Aznar, former Prime minister of Spain and President of FAES Foundation, closed on Friday, March 28, in Madrid, the annual seminar jointly organised by FAES Foundation and European Ideas Network, EIN, the network of think tanks and foundations linked to the European People’s Party. The seminar, which was opened on Thursday by Jaime Mayor Oreja, Vice-Chair of the People’s Party in the European Parliament, and Javier Zarzalejos, Secretary-General of FAES Foundation, addressed populism and nationalism as factors of social distortion as well as the new grounds for increased Transatlantic cooperation. A group of forty personalities—scholars, think tank members, MEPs and American executives—took part in the sessions.

TRANSATLANTIC COOPERATION

Friday, March 28’s session analysed the new grounds to increase Transatlantic cooperation, as well as the importance of the development of the free trade area between Europe and the United states, an issue of particular interest to FAES, which launched last year the TAFTA. The Case for an Open Transatlantic Free Trade Area report. Ana Palacio, former Minister for Foreign Affairs; Martin Michelot, coordinator of the German Marshall Fund of the United States; Karim Lesina, Vice-President of AT&T; J. D. Gordon, former US Defense Department spokesman for the Western Hemisphere; Francisco Acosta Soto,  Chair of the EU’s working group on Latin America (COLAT/AMLAT); and Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, Director of the International Department of FAES, participated, amongst others, in the session.


POPULISM AND NATIONALISM

On the first session of the seminar—Thursday, March 27—the participants addressed the dangerous reality which nationalism and secessionism represent in Europe as ideological factors of distortion in the contemporary society. Javier Zarzalejos, Secretary-General of FAES, and Ignacio Astarloa, Director of the FAES Constitution and Institutions Department took part in the session; as well as Florian Hartleb, coordinator for political analysis and party research of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Foundation;  Dave Sinardet, professor at the Free University of Brussels, and Ido de Haan, professor of political history at the Utrecht University.