Dear friends, a year has passed since our last gathering here in Prague, on the occasion of the Patrimonium Sancti Adalberti conference. Unfortunately, we must acknowledge that our hopes for peace have remained unfulfilled. The world, and Europe in particular, is less secure than ever; the sirens of war have not fallen silent, and Central Europe is increasingly being relegated to the role of a military rear area in a conflict that threatens to spread far beyond its borders.
Only a few weeks ago, during a visit to the Ukrainian-Polish border, anti-drone alerts were sounding on mobile phones, while trains carrying Ukrainian women were arriving at the small Polish railway station of Chełm, just a few kilometres from the border. Two days later, in Vienna, I witnessed an equally telling scene: trains arriving from Ukraine, packed with women, crossed paths with departures carrying dozens upon dozens of men fleeing the mobilisation imposed by the government in Kyiv.
Central Europe today stands on the threshold of a wider war. Its foremost priority must therefore be to determine how to avoid becoming directly involved: not only to safeguard its own security, but also to preserve that of the entire continent.
During the unipolar era of world history, borders seemed destined to lose their significance. Today, however, the emergence of a multipolar order is restoring them to a position of strategic centrality. The territories we represent here have for centuries constituted one of the great fault lines of European history: the place where the powers, civilisations and geopolitical interests of East and West meet, confront one another and, at times, clash.
Although the turbulent Middle Eastern landscape occupies much of the attention of international politics and the media, Central Europe retains a geopolitical significance of an entirely distinctive kind. I do not fear contradiction when I assert that it is one of the most important strategic crossroads in the contemporary world.
We need only look back at our recent history. Both world wars originated in this part of Europe: the First with the assassination in Sarajevo, Bosnia, and the Second with the German invasion of Poland. And should a third world war ever break out, Poland’s borders could once again find themselves on the front line, exposed to the risk of an expansion of the conflict in Ukraine.
Central Europe’s position, situated between Germany’s industrial and economic heartland and Russia’s immense wealth of natural resources, makes it a strategic crossroads of paramount importance. This geographical position is not merely a condition to be endured; it is a political asset to be understood and put to good use.
If the countries of Central Europe wish to make their voices heard in history and in the great affairs of international politics, they can and must turn their geographical position into a source of influence. First and foremost, they must develop a full awareness of their strategic weight: without Central Europe, both Western Europe and Russia would see their capacity for projecting power across the continent significantly diminished. They must also understand how to exercise this influence in the interests of their own peoples, without becoming instruments of other powers’ ambitions.
I come from Italy, a country that for centuries has known how to serve both as a bridge between different civilisations and as a bastion defending its own identity. Venice, a city culturally and geographically close to Mitteleuropa, was for centuries a gateway to the East and the Islamic world. Yet it was also a Christian power that contributed to the victory at Lepanto and one of the principal opponents of Ottoman expansion in the Mediterranean.
Venice thus teaches us that openness and defence are not necessarily incompatible. Central Europe can draw a valuable lesson from its history: it must learn to be both bridge and fortress; a meeting place and a centre from which an independent political will can radiate.
To fulfil this role, however, a firm awareness of one’s own identity, roots and shared values is indispensable. Only a people conscious of who they are can open themselves to the world without dissolving into it. Without such awareness, the danger is that they will be reduced either to financial platforms serving foreign interests or to military strongholds devoid of genuine strategic autonomy.
The raison d’État of the countries of Central Europe therefore depends on their ability to embrace consciously their destiny as a crossroads between East and West. A condition that was often perceived in the past as a curse can, in the emerging multipolar order, become an extraordinary source of wealth, influence and prosperity.
The history of Venice demonstrates that political greatness does not depend exclusively on demographic size. With a relatively small population, the Republic built a prosperous empire, developed institutions that, despite all the limitations of their time, afforded its ruling classes a considerable degree of political participation, and deployed a fleet capable of challenging the greatest powers of the age.
In the same way, Central Europe, despite lacking the demographic weight of Russia, China or Western Europe as a whole, can exert an influence far greater than its numbers would suggest. To achieve this, it must overcome any sense of inferiority, reject diplomatic dogmatism and build, with determination and foresight, an autonomous geopolitical pole.
Such autonomy requires greater political initiative. On the one hand, we must reject those strategic dogmas of the European Union that too often risk sacrificing the concrete interests of peoples on the altar of abstract ideological rigidity. On the other, we must stand firm against Russian intimidation and the various forms of Chinese economic imperialism, without renouncing a pragmatic relationship with any of the great powers.
From this perspective, Central Europe’s geographical position must become a source of negotiating leverage and economic opportunity. Through cooperation, trade and the integration of their respective economies, the countries of the region can make the outbreak of new wars at the heart of the continent not only undesirable, but economically irrational as well.
The challenge of security can thus be transformed into a challenge of prosperity. Provided they succeed in speaking with a sufficiently unified voice, the countries of Central Europe can become the balance of power between East and West: not a periphery contested by the great powers, but a political actor capable of influencing their decisions.
And yet, there is something even more precious that Central Europe can offer the rest of the continent. I am referring to patriotism, national pride and the awareness of belonging to peoples who have experienced foreign domination and won their freedom at a high price. Above all, I am referring to the determination to defend a collective identity without submitting it to the dictates of ideological conformity and political correctness.
Never before have the world’s great powers — from the United States to China and India — seemed so intent on rediscovering the value of their own identities, developing new narratives and renewing their national myths. Western Europe, by contrast, appears increasingly incapable of independently generating a shared vision of its own destiny, trapped within a political horizon often devoid of historical ambition and self-confidence.
The construction of a patriotic narrative, however, is not merely an aesthetic or philosophical exercise. It is an essential component of a nation’s security. A people that does not believe in its own history, that fails to recognise its roots and cannot envision its future will struggle to find the will required to defend its freedom.
Central Europe can therefore become a school of patriotism for the entire continent: a place where we can rediscover not only the meaning of sovereignty and national responsibility, but also the need to safeguard our identity within the citadel of thought, before defending it at the borders of our homeland.
In other words, it can become the intellectual capital of a renewed Europe: a Europe that regains confidence in itself, recovers an awareness of its roots and rediscovers its capacity to act as a subject of history rather than passively endure its course.
Europe as a whole, and not merely its western part, will benefit from this renewal. The peoples of Central Europe will thus be able to offer the continent a decisive contribution: not only in strategic and economic terms, but also in the cultural and spiritual spheres.
Perhaps this is precisely their historical vocation: to return to the centre of Europe and the world, reclaiming the centrality that socialist totalitarianism and the division of the Cold War had taken away from them.
No longer a periphery of history, no longer a land of passage or a battleground for foreign powers, but a conscious protagonist of its own destiny.
[Photo: Ignaz Wiradi CC BY-SA 3.0]
