Is the iron curtain making a comeback?

We are very pleased to meet Mr. Frans Timmermans, Former Vice-President of the European Commission, Political leader of GroenLinks-PvdA, at the University of Zurich.

Frans Timmermans (born in Maastricht, 1961) began his career as a diplomat. After serving as a member of parliament for the Dutch Labour Party and holding the position of State Secretary for European Cooperation, he became Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2012.

In 2014, Timmermans moved to Brussels, where he became the First Vice-President of the European Commission, responsible for Better Regulation, Inter-Institutional Relations, the Rule of Law, and the Charter of Fundamental Rights. In 2019, he was appointed Executive Vice-President of the European Commission for the European Green Deal. In this role, he led ambitious green legislation, including the Green Deal and the Nature Restoration Act, through the European Parliament.

In August 2023, Timmermans resigned as EU Commissioner after being elected leader of the GroenLinks-PvdA alliance by members of GroenLinks and PvdA. He is now leading the opposition in the Dutch parliament.

 

Putin’s aggressive politics of war and expansion has lead to a comeback of the ‘iron curtain’, a phrase famously coined by Winston Churchill in a speech in Wisconsin, United States in March 1946. In Putin‘s world, the rule of law and the sovereignty of nation states are replaced with a struggle for spheres of influence. In many ways this is not that different from the idea of an iron curtain that descended across the continent, ushering in the Cold War. Our times are different. But in some ways history echoes. If we want to prevent Putin from succeeding, if we want to prevent a new cold war, Europe needs to show extraordinary resilience. Resilience towards Putin‘s war in Ukraine. Resilience towards his attempt to revive the notion of ‘might is right’. Resilience towards the ultranationalist outlook that fuels the surge of the radical right. It is of the most vital importance that we propose a narrative of our own, a narrative that favours the future over a nostalgic past and imagines a hopeful idea of progress for Europe.

 

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