Reimagining European Cultural DiplomacyHistorical Legacies and Future Prospects of East-West Relations

Over three days, from November 27 to 29, 2025, the international conference “Reimagining European Cultural Diplomacy. Historical Legacies and Future Prospects of East–West Relations” took place in Bucharest, hosted by the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Bucharest and the Goethe-Institut Bucharest.

The event marked the culmination of two years of research conducted within the Horizon Europe project NARDIV by scholars from the participating universities, while at the same time deliberately opening the dialogue to researchers from other European academic institutions. Scholars from Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, Romania, and Serbia responded to this initiative.

The contributions highlighted both the diversity of intra-European cultural relations in the recent past – shaped throughout the Cold War by the East–West divide – and the urgent need to move beyond this division by developing forward-looking perspectives on the future of these relations. At a time when Europe is striving to present a united front in terms of economic strenght and military security, cultural diplomacy emerges as an essential third pillar for shaping a resilient and cohesive Europe.

A shared European cultural diplomacy has the potential to strengthen European integration, promote sustainable transnational cooperation, and counteract the fragmentation of narratives within Europe and beyond its borders. The conference discussions will be consolidated in an open-access publication, ensuring broad and long-term accessibility of the research findings to both the academic community and a wider public.