The Friends of Slovakia, in cooperation with The Slovak American Society of Washington, D.C. invites you to a talk by Rick Zednik titled “Slovakia in the EU 10 Years On: Promises Fulfilled?“
The spring of 2004 was momentous in the history of independent Slovakia. On May 1st of that year, the country joined the European Union. Coming as it did less than five weeks after Slovakia joined NATO, this marked the culmination of a long process that was highly uncertain in the 1990s. A decade later, we can now reflect on what enabled Slovakia to join these European and trans- Atlantic structures, and how the subsequent integration has fared.
Rick Zednik will cover Slovakia’s early path toward EU and NATO membership as co-founding editor of the Slovak Spectator in Bratislava, from 1994 to 2000. Since 2008 he has followed Slovakia’s deepening integration within the EU as CEO at EurActiv, the EU policy news network in Brussels. Rick is a dual citizen of Slovakia and the United States. He has a BA in political science from Trinity College in Hartford, and an MS from Columbia Journalism School, and an MBA from Harvard. He is the author of the family memoir A Country Lost, Then Found: Discovering My Father’s Slovakia.