Short version

On May 21, 2020, RIAC held an online round-table discussion "COVID-19 Epidemic: the Future of "European Unity" and EU Foreign Policy".

Opening speeches were made by: Igor Ivanov, RIAC President; Alexander Grushko, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Russia, RIAC Member; Vladimir Chizhov, Russia’s Ambassador to the EU, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Russia, RIAC Member.

Full version

On May 21, 2020, RIAC held an online round-table discussion "COVID-19 Epidemic: the Future of "European Unity" and EU Foreign Policy".

Opening speeches were made by: Igor Ivanov, RIAC President; Alexander Grushko, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Russia, RIAC Member; Vladimir Chizhov, Russia’s Ambassador to the EU, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Russia, RIAC Member.

Presentations were made by the following panelists, RIAC members: Alexey Gromyko, Director of RAS Institute of Europe, RAS Corresponding Member; Alexey Meshkov, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Russia to the French Republic and the Principality of Monaco; Aleksey Kuznetsov, Acting Director of the Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, RAS Corresponding Member.

After the keynote speeches, Russian ambassadors to various EU states, RIAC members and experts participated in a discussion.

An online round table was moderated by Ivan Timofeev, RIAC Director of Programs; Andrey Kortunov, RIAC Director General, summarized the key points of the discussion.

The following issues were raised: the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on the development of the EU; required actions to deal with the consequences of the crisis; transformation of foreign policy goals and interests; the impact of the crisis on the U.S.-EU security relations; prospects for relations between Russia and the EU after the COVID-19 epidemic.