CENTREPEACE at EISA and UACES 2026

Nine days, two capitals, one region at the center of the conversation. In early September, CENTREPEACE researchers took their work to two key gatherings in the field. The first was the 19th Pan-European Conference on International Relations of the European International Studies Association (EISA), held from 1 to 4 September at ISCTE – University Institute of Lisbon. The second was the UACES 56th Annual Conference, held from 7 to 9 September at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University in Prague.

In Lisbon, Martin Jirušek presented two papers linking ideology and economic security. One examined illiberalism as a meta-ideology of foreign policy in Central European states in the context of the war in Ukraine. The other looked at China's economic tools as a source of concern for the EU in critical raw materials trade. He also joined an editors' roundtable on publishing international relations in and on Central and Eastern Europe.

Martin Chovančík focused on deterrence and militarization. With Zdeněk Kříž, he traced how Russian red lines have multiplied over time and how Western actors failed to read those signals. In a separate panel on security in Central and Eastern European states, he examined the region's non-traditional trajectories of militarization.

Zinaida Bechná chaired the panel Geostrategic In-Betweenness: Clash of Diffusions, Nested Agency and Liminal Orders in the EU–Russia Neighborhood. On it, Vladimir Gel'man presented a joint paper co-authored with Bechná, Katalin Miklóssy, and Pavel Baev. The paper explored how domestic and international factors interact in political change across post-Soviet in-between countries. Bechná presented a paper she is developing with Petra Kuchyňková, on how the de facto states of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transnistria have exercised agency and secured their survival since 2022. On the final day, she examined how authoritarian interference has eroded Georgia's Euro-Atlantic path.

In Prague, Bechná returned to Georgia, showing how its hybrid regime turns foreign interference into a resource for consolidating domestic control. She also presented a companion paper, co-authored with Kuchyňková, on the EU's engagement without recognition toward the same de facto states, as part of a panel on the transformation of the EU project.

Chovančík and Adriana Ilavská turned to Europe's defense industry. Their first paper found that since 2022, the industry has favored national champions over cross-border consolidation, locking in fragmentation despite unprecedented political momentum. The second, co-authored with Oldřich Krpec, argued that Central and Eastern European states are gaining a growing share of European defense production. The recent geopolitical turn accelerated this shift, but the region's own long-term industrial strategy started it.

Together, the contributions reflected the core of CENTREPEACE's research agenda, from the politics of the EU's contested neighborhood to the region's growing weight in European defense and economic security. Presenting at EISA and UACES brought that work, and the Central and Eastern European perspective behind it, into two of the forums where Europe's security agenda is debated.