Fanni Elek and Christina Griessler, Author at GlobalFocus

Fanni Elek and Christina Griessler

Fanni Elek is Research Fellow and a Ph.D. Candidate at the Chair of Comparative Political Science focusing on Central and Eastern Europe at Andrássy University Budapest (AUB). In her research, she focuses on European Integration of the Western Balkan countries with special regards to the politics of external actors in the region. She holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Szeged and an M.A. in International Relations – European Studies from AUB. Christina Griessler is a research fellow for the Network for Political Communication (netPOL) at the Andrássy University Budapest, Hungary. She studied political science and cultural anthropology at the University of Vienna, where she also obtained a doctorate in political science in 2009. She received a Postgraduate Diploma in Conflict and Dispute Resolution Studies from Trinity College Dublin.

Policy Recommendations

Regional organisations should collect information on existing youth projects (e.g. the Regional Youth Cooperation Office and the Youth Initiative for Human Rights) and relevant funding possibilities to better disseminate the available information to a broader audience within the EU and across the Western Balkan region. These organisations should also act as contact points for interested audiences.
Fostering reconciliation, dismantling old animosities, and establishing trust by providing exchange possibilities, needs to be further promoted. The ERASMUS Programme should fully include all Western Balkan countries, hence changing the status to programme countries for all.
The focus of the Interreg-IPA Cross-border Cooperation Programme Hungary-Serbia should move to areas that are of main importance for fulfilling the technical requirements for the EU accession process, such as the rule of law, and providing information on the main logic of democratic processes.

Youth Cooperation in the Serbian-Hungarian Context