On Saturday (today) in Warsaw a two-day international conference “GenFree: Three Seas Generation Freedom” starts. It is devoted to the development prospects of the Three Seas Region in the coming decades. The event will be attended by prominent scientists, politicians, diplomats, business representatives, and renowned journalists representing almost all countries associated with the Three Seas Initiative.
The Three Seas Initiative is one of the largest geopolitical projects in our part of the world. It covers 12 European Union countries located between the Baltic, Adriatic, and Black Seas. They include Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania, and Bulgaria. These countries cover one-third of the EU’s territory and 112 million people (more than 20% of all EU’s citizens) live there.
The Three Seas aim to reduce infrastructural and economic disparities of the common European market and to create a regional forum for dialogue on issues important to the Member States, especially in the field of cross-border infrastructure.
“In recent years, it is the Three Seas Initiative countries that have been among the fastest-growing EU countries. Not only is infrastructure and business important, but cooperation and exchange of cultural values are also necessary. The inhabitants of the Three Seas need to get to know each other better and understand each other better, and this is what initiatives like the GenFree Conference serve. I hope that there will be more and more projects of this kind both in Poland and in other countries of our region,” says Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, the special guest of the “GenFree: Three Seas Generation Freedom” conference.
The main theme of the conference, under the patronage of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, is the future of the Three Seas Region in the context of civilization, technology, and business. Speakers and panelists will be persons directly involved in the development of the Three Seas Initiative from Poland and abroad as well as recognized international experts specializing in geopolitical issues.
The conference is divided into two thematic blocks. The first will focus on discussing the strengths and opportunities of the countries in the region. Referring to the so-called Asian Tigers, the panelists will try to answer the question to what extent the Three Seas resemble them and whether they can avoid the mistakes those countries made.
The second block focuses on possible development scenarios for Central Europe in key areas such as energy, sustainable development, technological and social changes, including digitalization, transport, etc.
The title of the conference “Freedom Generation” refers to the generation born after 1989, which never experienced communism and whose oldest representatives are already in their thirties. This generation, which will become the dominant force in Central European politics, business, and media, will decide the shape of the Three Seas Region over the next half-century.