Conference Program

This paper will be devoted to discuss the Central and Eastern European perspective on colonialism in International Relations scholarship. Global IR perspective focus on countries that were colonized by Western European countries, leaving behind Central Europe, a region colonized for more than 100 years and additionally staying under foreign (Soviet) domination for almost 50 years after the Second World War. Therefore IR scholarship in CEEC countries has been relatively young and facing set of obstacles to influence mainstream IR, including linguistic barriers, financial constrains or lack of prestige in IR. At the same time, its position has been growing significantly since the post-Cold war reforms and the region is benefiting of being a part of Europe. Those perspectives should start a debate on all three dimensions of the proposed section, as knowledge is a powerful tool of influencing the global system, hence CEEC backwardness is an important factor not only in the scholarship, but also shaping the politics.

The European Union (EU) has played a key role in reshaping international development policy of its Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) members. The obligation to adopt goals and standards related to the EU development policy was one of the conditions for their accession to the Community. Although some convergence with EU standards can be observed, it is difficult to expect CEE donors to emulate the policies of the old EU Member States.

The paper discusses the qualitative and quantitative aspects of CEE countries' involvement in development cooperation under EU and OECD regulations and standards.. The analysis is based on the concept of Europeanisation and, in particular, 'shallow Europeanisation' concerning the development policies of the Member States that joined the EU after 2004 (Orbie and Lightfoot 2017). The term refers to the process by which CEE countries adopt EU legislation and other informal rules and policies, but implement them in practice with little or no enforcement (Horky and Lightfoot 2012, Lightfoot and Szent-Iványi 2012, Szent-Iványi 2014; Szent-Iványi and Lightfoot 2015). The paper is based on data from the OECD and on relevant documents from the EU, such as the European Consensus on Development (both the 2005 and the 2017 editions). This study aims to explore possible development scenarios for CEE aid policies, i.e. some convergence and better coordination of CEE aid policies with the EU on the one hand, and the development of their ways of implementing aid policies and areas of specialisation on the other.

In a dramatically expanding digital world, privacy is a function of multiple socio-economic factors and demands a re-conceptualisation of concepts like equality, development, security and sovereignty. For instance, digital inequality makes online privacy a tradeable 'premium' service offered by Big Tech Giants like Meta and Huawei, primarily fuelling the 'digital scramble' of 'data'- the 'new oil' in the Global South.

Against this backdrop, this qualitative research paper aims to discuss how digital inequality undermines the right to privacy and the European Union's (EU) role in safeguarding data subjects' privacy in the Global South.

It is a descriptive study involving both primary and secondary sources. The primary sources include official documents of institutions like the EU and the African Union (AU). Further, secondary sources include books, newspaper articles and journal publications.

The research study addresses three key points: a) the EU's approach to data protection and privacy that equips it to be a dominant regulatory actor and be an extra-territorial rule-maker, b) the EU's initiatives in externalising the EU's General Data Protection Regulation, and c) the responses from the Global South to the EU's GDPR. The scope of this research paper is limited to the regions of Africa and Latin America.

The research paper argues that the EU's GDPR safeguards privacy through a robust global data protection and privacy regulatory regime, with implications for the Global South, mainly in Africa and Latin America regions that are pursuing digital development in close partnership under the EU's flagship programs like the EU Global Gateway.