Seminar Abstract 

The 16+1 initiative aims enhance trade and economic relations between China and 16 countries of Central and Eastern Europe, started in 2012. More recently, its’ significance increased along the progress of the Belt and Road Initiative, with several of the Eastern EU member states aspiring for the role of the New Silk Road’s entry points into the EU, redefining their geopolitical position from periphery to transit hubs. At the same time, the 16+1 and the BRI also has impacts on, as well as it is impacted by the existing internal divisions, within the EU, such as the between the Eastern and Western as well as the Northern and Southern member states, that both have deepened in recent years due to the European debt crisis and the European migrant crisis.

About the Speaker

Csaba Barnabas Horvath has obtained his PhD degree in 2014 at the International Relations Doctoral School of the Corvinus University of Budapest, with a PhD thesis on the Australia-India-Japan-US Quadrilateral. His main area of interest is geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific. He has participated in visiting fellowships at the NUS (Singapore) ANU (Australia) and the NCCU (Taiwan) and also worked as an external researcher for the Sesearch Center of the Chiefs of Staff of the Hungarian Defence Forces. Since 2017 he is an associate researcher at the MTA-ELTE-SZTE Silk Road Research Group, and for March and April 2018, a visiting researcher at the Penang Institute in Penang, Malaysia.