Budapest Forum 2023

2023-09-14

World-renowned speakers, foreign policy experts, activists, and journalists to convene and discuss how to build sustainable democracies

Budapest, Hungary –The Budapest Forum, a major international conference sponsored by the Political Capital Institute, the CEU Democracy Institute, and the Municipality of Budapest, will return for a third consecutive year in October 2023. The two-day event, which will feature contributions from leading politicians and foreign policy experts, will be formally opened by the internationally acclaimed Canadian author Margaret Atwood, a dedicated advocate of democratic governance. 

Similar to the past two years, on October 11-12, leading local and foreign experts, activists, decision-makers, and journalists will gather in Budapest to discuss the most pressing social issues of our time within the framework of the Budapest Forum. The conference will host twelve-panel discussions, all live-streamed via Facebook, to explore topics such as the war in Ukraine, the energy and climate crisis, state-sponsored disinformation campaigns, the role of tech platforms, the rule of law in Hungary, the Russian influence on the Western Balkan, gender roles, and China's foreign policy, among others.


The Budapest Forum aims to draw international attention to possible solutions and best practices without discouraging participants by invoking pessimism. Over the course of two days, approximately 100 experts will contribute to this effort. Some of the prominent names include William Felix Browder, a financial expert; Helena Dalli, European Commissioner for Equality; Gwendoline Delbos-Corfield, Member of the European Parliament; Elisa Ferreira, European Commissioner for Cohesion and Reforms; Jeffrey Gedmin, Senior Fellow at Georgetown University and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue; Věra Jourová, Vice-President of the European Commission for Values and Transparency; Dénes Krusovszky, writer; Anna Lührmann, State Minister for European Affairs in the German Foreign Office;; Gladden John Pappin, President of the Hungarian Institute of Foreign Affairs and Trade; Didier Reynders, European Commissioner for Justice; Michael Shermer, historian of science and sceptic; Liu Shih-chung, Taiwanese Ambassador to Hungary; Joseph Uscinski, American political scientist and expert in conspiracy theories.

The conference will be opened by Gergely Karácsony, the Mayor of Budapest, and the world-renowned Canadian author Margaret Atwood.


We are pleased to announce that this year's conference has strategic partners, including the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF), and the Vienna office of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, as well as partners such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the Taiwanese Representation in Hungary, the European Parliament Greens group. 

The conference will be in English, with continuous Hungarian-language simultaneous interpretation provided on-site and via Zoom.


Event Venue: Central European University (1051 Budapest, Nádor utca 15.)

RSVP: You can register for the event at this link: http://tiny.cc/budapestforum2023_regist.

Facebook event: The Facebook event is available here:

https://www.facebook.com/events/241671132065097/
Conference program: You can access the continuously updated program here: https://budapestforum.org/