We are a platform for experts and intellectuals from Central and Eastern Europe, embodying the liberal environment, to share their opinions and ideas.

The year 2025 was decisive for Lithuania – not only geopolitically, but economically. Defence spending increased significantly, while tax and pension reforms reshaped the policy landscape. Yet beneath these headline decisions lies a deeper question, one that extends far beyond Lithuania: are we strengthening the foundations of long-term prosperity, or shifting responsibility ever further towards the state?

How is the Iranian society coping with the crackdown on the protests? What is the current state of the regime and its prospects for the future? Who is Reza Pahlavi and what might be his role in the near future? And how do Iranians view the U.S. intervention in their affairs? Leszek Jazdzewski talks with Touska Gholami Khaljiri, an Iranian women’s and children’s rights activist and researcher based in Łódź, Poland.

When I first walked into the room where the Balkan Women’s Academy BAZA was about to begin in 2023, I had no idea that these meetings would become a source of strength, courage, and solidarity. Today, after three editions of the Academy, BAZA has brought together 35 women from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia, women connected not only by geography, but by shared values.

Poland stands at a decisive moment in the debate over legal recognition for same-sex couples. After years of political stalemate and institutional resistance, a shift in parliamentary power in 2023 created renewed momentum for reform. The emergence of a broad democratic coalition — spanning from the left to the centre-right — has reopened legislative space for civil unions. Yet political realignment alone does not guarantee success.

Foreign influence and malign interference are most often associated with adversarial actors such as Russia or China. Yet there are also areas in which US-based actors—both public and private—exercise pressure on European decision- and policymakers in comparable ways. Disputes over freedom of speech, censorship, and digital rights have become a new front line in transatlantic relations.