Havel-Cleveringa Lecture 2025
- Kde: The Netherlands’ Residence, Slavíčkova 10, Prague 6
- Kdy: 16. prosinec 2025, 17:30 – 19:30
The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Václav Havel Library are pleased to invite you to the fifth Havel–Cleveringa Lecture, delivered this year by Dr. Joris Larik, Associate Professor of Comparative, EU, and International Law at Leiden University and Director of Education at Leiden University College The Hague. A specialist in EU external relations and global governance, Dr. Larik has served since 2022 on the Committee on European Integration of the Dutch Advisory Council on International Affairs.
The lecture will be hosted by H.E. Ms. Mina Noor, Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and moderated by Tomáš Sedláček, Director of the Václav Havel Library.
The Havel–Cleveringa Lecture series honors two remarkable voices of moral resistance. In 1940, Professor Rudolf Cleveringa publicly denounced the Nazi occupation in Leiden. Decades later, Václav Havel confronted the lies and oppression of communist rule in Czechoslovakia. Their courage continues to inspire this annual lecture.
Dr. Larik will explore the EU’s remarkable geopolitical shift in recent years. Propelled forward by the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but having started already earlier, several longstanding taboos were broken: ranging from delivering lethal aid to an active conflict to relaxing fiscal rules to procure considerable funds for defence procurement. Today, following its “geopolitical awakening”, Europe is in the process of “rearmament”. This lecture retraces the milestones of this development, increasingly codified in EU law, examines how they reflect a deeper transformation of the European integration project, and provides an outlook on the EU as a “post-peace” project.
The event will be held in English.
Register by writing to pra-rsvp@minbuza.nl. Due to limited capacity, the organizers reserve the right to decline registrations.