The following study was prepared by CEID experts based on the European Café event held on February 10, 2025. The guest of the discussion was Péter Sztáray, State Secretary for Security Policy at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.The summary and recommendations were compiled...

On March 17, IRSEM Europe hosted a high-level discussion in collaboration with EUROPEUM and the Think Visegrad platform, focusing on the future of European defense amid ongoing geopolitical shifts. The event featured experts Aleksandra Kozioł (PISM), Juraj Majcin (European Policy Centre), Federica Mangiameli (GLOBSEC), and...

Think Visegrad is a think tank plat­form for struc­tured dia­logue on issues of strate­gic regional impor­tance. The plat­form aims to ana­lyze key issues for the Visegrad Group (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia), and pro­vides rec­om­men­da­tions to the gov­ern­ments of Visegrad Group (V4) coun­tries, the annual pres­i­den­cies...

Report | Discussing Ukraine in V4 mainstream media Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, media coverage of the country has increased significantly. Interpreting and commenting on events, putting them in the news and shaping the debate about Ukraine's future prospects in relation to European integration has...

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, media coverage of the country has increased significantly. Interpreting and commenting on events, putting them in the news and shaping the debate about Ukraine's future prospects in relation to European integration has thus become an important part of the responsibility of most mainstream media.

"The study presented consists of a media analysis and focus group discussions. CEID conveyed the narrative analysis of four chosen Hungarian media outlets to identify the key messages used concerning Ukraine and Ukraine's future EU membership. Following this, focus group discussions were organized to map the Hungarian respondents' opinions about the same topics. This way we could showcase the Ukraine-related messages in the media outlets with the highest reach, and the potential recipient side of them. The Hungarian results significantly differed from the results of all three other countries, showing a one-sided, strongly negative image of Ukraine, deeming absolutely non-desirable and impossible that Ukraine could ever join the EU. The focus group discussions corresponded to this as the respondents depicted Ukraine in a negative light and repeated the propagandistic messages."- Dorka Takácsy, Research Fellow, CEID

However, as the war drags on, the V4 citizens' awareness of the conflict has diverged. At different times, some topics have been given more emphasis than others, making the quality of coverage often incomplete or unconvincing. Some countries emphasise the autonomy of reporting, which in turn allows for broad and in-depth coverage, while there are regimes that narrow the information and use the topic of war to produce stories for domestic purposes.

Event Summary   Female political participation at risk with the spread of online harassment 2024's last European Cafe focused on a gender issue in politics, going beyond CEID's usual foreign policy agenda. Organised in cooperation with the European Parliament's Liaison Office in Budapest, the discussion explored how online...

Female political participation at risk with the spread of online harassment 2024's last European Cafe focused on a gender issue in politics, going beyond CEID's usual foreign policy agenda. Organised in cooperation with the European Parliament's Liaison Office in Budapest, the discussion explored how online violence...

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