/05.07.14/. - Today at the FAES Campus Sebastián Piñera, former President of Chile, argued that “the political centre of the world has shifted towards the Pacific, but the Atlantic has a lot to say and can regain its leading role”. He defined the Transatalntic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the free trade agreement that is being negotiated between the European Union and the United States, as “a step in the right direction”. Jaime García-Legaz, Secretary of State for Trade, who introduced Piñera, stressed that “Spain cannot afford to waste its capacity to access the Atlantic basin in a privileged way”. 

This morning, 2014 FAES Campus held a roundtable with the representatives of the Venezuelan democratic opposition. They provided a first-hand view of the current situation in Venezuela and analysed the links between democracy and the Rule of Law. María Corina Machado and Julio Borges, Deputies of Venezuela’s National Assembly and Ramón Muchacho, Mayor of Chacao, participated in the conference and were introduced by the Cuban writer Carlos Alberto Montaner.

Today at the FAES Campus Sebastián Piñera, former President of Chile, argued that “the political centre of the world has shifted towards the Pacific, but the Atlantic has a lot to say and can regain its leading role”. He defined the Transatalntic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the free trade agreement that is being negotiated between the European Union and the United States, as “a step in the right direction”. Jaime García-Legaz, Secretary of State for Trade, who introduced Piñera, stressed that “Spain cannot afford to waste its capacity to access the Atlantic basin in a privileged way”. 

04.07.14.-José María Aznar, former Prime Minister of Spain and President of the FAES Foundation, launched today at the 2014 FAES Campus the A New Atlantic Community: Generating Growth, Human Development and Security in the Atlantic Hemisphere white paper, set in motion by the Atlantic Basin Initiative, chaired and launched by Aznar at the Centre for Transatlantic Relations of the Johns Hopkins University, of which he is a distinguished fellow. The paper calls for the redefinition of a new Atlantic community that includes South America, Central America and the Atlantic countries in Africa, based on the common values of democracy and freedom and that is well-positioned in the world.

José María Aznar, former Prime Minister of Spain and President of the FAES Foundation, launched today at the 2014 FAES Campus the A New Atlantic Community: Generating Growth, Human Development and Security in the Atlantic Hemisphere white paper, set in motion by the Atlantic Basin Initiative, chaired and launched by Aznar at the Centre for Transatlantic Relations of the Johns Hopkins University, of which he is a distinguished fellow. The paper calls for the redefinition of a new Atlantic community that includes South America, Central America and the Atlantic countries in Africa, based on the common values of democracy and freedom and that is well-positioned in the world.

November 9, 2004 was the fifteenth anniversary of the ?fall? of the Berlin Wall. To commemorate the event, the FAES Foundation organized a series of lectures called ?The Freedom Revolution?, in which twelve figures from the political and intellectual world in the East and West took part. The series was coordinated by Ana Palacio, a member of the Spanish Parliament and former Minister for Foreign Affairs, and it ran from November 2004 to May 2005.One of the main theses of the ?Freedom Revolution? is that the Berlin Wall did not collapse of its own accord. The Wall was pulled down by the determination of people who risked their lives in order to regain their freedom. If the Wall fell it was also because of the steadfastness of a generation of politicians who were determined to stop the advance of totalitarian tyranny despite of the incomprehension of a large proportion of intellectuals in the West. These efforts helped to bring freedom and peace to the other side of the Iron Curtain.Some of the eye witnesses of that time, many of whom played key roles in the process, took part in the lecture series and explained their vision of events and their response. Helmut Kohl, Bronislaw Geremek, Giovanni Sartori, Nicolas Baverez, Carlos Alberto Montaner, Jesús Huerta de Soto, Francis Fukuyama, Guy Sorman, André Glucksmann, Richard Perle, Joseph Weiler and Christopher DeMuth took us through what happened in the Freedom Revolution. Their words, their memories and their teachings, given in the Great Hall of San Pablo-CEU University, are gathered together in this volume, which also includes the introductions made by José María Aznar, AnaPalacio and José María Lassalle.The FAES Foundation would like to give special thanks to Noah Clarke, Carmelo López-Arias, Elena Segura, Jessica Zorogastua and Miguel Ángel Quintanilla Navarro for their work in putting together this publication.We would also like to thank the Rector of San Pablo-CEU University, José Alberto Parejo Gámir, for the magnificent facilities offered by the university, which made this lecture series possible.

Europe is in the throes of two simultaneous crises: on the one hand, it is suffering from a political crisis, a crisis of leadership, one that has led to constitutional failure; on the other, it is suffering from a loss of identity, a phenomenon that results in cultural relativism. Marcello Pera, Speaker of the Italian Senate and Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Pisa, delivered a conference entitled “Strength of Identity” during the course of the FAES Campus 2005, a paper which the FAES Foundation is now publishing. Also known as the co-author of the book Senza Radici (“Without Roots”) alongside Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Professor Pera urges European culture to proudly recall and reaffirm its origins and its universal democratic principles: freedom, equality and tolerance. In this respect, Europe must recognise the intrinsic value of a civilisation, Western civilisation, that has given the world so many universal ideas. “Europe must be aware of the moral superiority of a series of values that have prevailed over centuries and that have produced beneficial results wherever they have become established”.