Recently, the Danube Institute co-hosted an event with Helena History Press where Danish author Jaap Scholten talked about his personal experiences while travelling throughout Ukraine in the first six months of the war.

Simplistic labels like ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ for a rules-based, nations-centric approach are to be rejected—one can learn from former foreign minister of Hungary János Martini’s new English language book Nation and Europe: In Lieu of Memoirs which was presented to the audience on 18 September at Danube Institute.

Nigel Biggar’s recently published book titled Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning is a Sunday Times bestseller. The book is a unique analysis of Western colonialism, and a sober assessment of all the bad and good that the British Colonial Empire stood for. Without hiding the injustices and violence committed by the Empire, Nigel Biggar argues that the Empire was not the embodiment of pure evil.

The research conducted by the Danube Institute contradicts the image of an anti-Semitic Hungary painted by many Western mainstream media outlets. Thanks to the government’s zero tolerance policy, public anti-Semitic expressions are no longer tolerated and Jewish people can freely walk in the streets and worship in synagogues without having to rely on heavy security presence.

Evaluating the past and projecting scenarios for the future is especially important at a time when the V4 countries experience one of the greatest challenges to their alliance since its inception, due to very different national approaches to the war in Ukraine.