About Speaker
A graduate of High School No. 1 in Bydgoszcz and Oxford University. He served as a war correspondent in Afghanistan and Angola (1986–1989). In 2002–2005, he was a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., and the executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative.
Radosław Sikorski was Minister of Defence (2005–2007), Minister of Foreign Affairs (2007–2014), and Speaker of the Sejm (2014–2015). In 2019–2023, he was a Member of the European Parliament, sitting on the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Security and Defence Subcommittee. He chaired the Delegation for relations with the United States.
He is a Senior Fellow at the Center for European Studies at Harvard.
As Poland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, he launched, together with Carl Bildt, the EU’s Eastern Partnership. He proposed and helped to establish the European Endowment for Democracy and the Solidarity Prize.
In 2014, he headed the EU mission to Kyiv, which stopped the bloodshed on the Maidan.
He was listed among the Top 100 Global Thinkers by the Foreign Policy magazine for “speaking the truth, even when it is not diplomatic”.
He is the author of several books, including: Dust of the Saints: a Journey to Herat in Time of War, Full circle. A homecoming to free Poland, The Polish House: an Intimate History of Poland, Communism-freed Zone. An Interview, Poland Can Be Better. Behind the Scenes of Polish Diplomacy, and Poland. The State of the State.
Radosław Sikorski is married to the writer and journalist Anne Applebaum. They have two sons. He is interested in history.
Speaker
The European Momentum: Fixing Europe’s Role in Global Rupture
The rules-based international order was already under strain before 2026. But a convergence of forces has accelerated its unravelling in ways that would have seemed unthinkable a decade ago. Great power unilateralism is displacing multilateral coordination. Transactional bilateralism is replacing principled diplomacy. And the architecture of shared restraint built over decades, from arms control regimes to non-proliferation frameworks to trade and security treaties, is eroding faster than anything is being built to replace it. In 2026, every region is recalibrating. Alliances are being renegotiated. Middle powers are hedging. The authority of international institutions and the credibility of security guarantees are all in question simultaneously.
- What kind of order, if any, is emerging from the fracture and who gets to shape it?
- Can Europe act as a coherent geopolitical force?
- With Central and Eastern Europe increasingly at the heart of Europe's strategic debates, what does a more genuinely pan-European foreign policy look like in practice?
- How can Poland and Hungary rebuild practical dialogue, and what role can Germany play in supporting a more cohesive Central Europe?
- How can Central Europe drive European unity on Ukraine, NATO, energy resilience, competitiveness, enlargement and Europe's wider global role?
- As Washington's commitments are questioned and Beijing's influence grows, what does European strategic autonomy actually mean in practice and at what cost?
Livestream Link: https://youtube.com/live/mn6QxUxkjtY?feature=share
Panel Session
Global Systemic Transformation
CEE
Friday, 22. 5. 2026
18:00–18:45 CEST
Havel Stage
Behind Closed Doors with Radosław Sikorski
A candid conversation with Radosław Sikorski, Poland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, on the future of Europe’s security architecture, the transatlantic alliance and the geopolitical challenges reshaping the continent.
Chat
Defence
Saturday, 23. 5. 2026
09:15–09:30 CEST
POLITICO Speakeasy
