After over one year of research, last week, on February 19th, d|part and the Open Society European Policy Institute (OSEPI) officially launched the Voices on Valuespublications at a public eventat the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), Berlin. Based on a six-country survey study (Germany, France, Poland, Hungary, Italy and Greece) with over 6000 respondents and over 80 interviews, the publicationsinclude both high-level and comparative reports on common findings across Europe as well as country reports, which engage with country-specific understandings, debates and challenges concerning open societies.
In the afternoon event Dr Jan Eichhorn, Research Director of d|part and Coordinator of the Voices on Values project, together with d|part’s Senior Research Fellows, Dr Luuk Molthof and Magali Mohr, presented the key research findings, which were discussed with the wider public and a range of experts.
Among these were policy makers, acedemics, journalists and representatives of civil society organisations, including OSEPI’s Director Heather Grabbe and Daniela Schwarzer, Director of DGAP. Next to the presentation of the cross-country findings, in the afternoon one of the authors of the Hungarian report, Bulcsú Hunyadi, as well as the co-author of the Polish case study, Filip Pazdeski, presented their country’s key findings. This was followed by an open discussion on the commonalities and differences between the two countries, with a particular focus on the majoritarian understandings of democracy apparent in both.
In the evening an event with a particular focus on the German case study “The fading taboo of Germany’s national pride” took place. The presentation of the key findings by the study’s authors, Dr Luuk Molthof and Magali Mohr, was followed by a panel discussion on the research’s implications for Germany and, in particular, its role within the EU. Next to Jana Puglierinfrom DGAP, who moderated the session, and dpart’s Director Dr Jan Eichhorn, the author of “deutsch, nicht dumpf”, Thea Dorn, the deputy head of the Berlin office of Der Spiegel, Christiane Hoffmann, and Selmin Çalışkan, Director of Institutional Relations, OSF Berlin, formed part of the panel.