On December 12 and 13, GMF Berlin, as part of its G8/EU Series, held a workshop in cooperation with GMF Bratislava. Under the title "It's Not Your Dad's Europe," the workshop looked at what the Visegrad countries bring to the EU. The event was hosted by the Böll Foundation in Berlin.

On the first panel, about domestic developments in the four Visegrad countries, the speakers were Martin Butora, honorary president at the Institute for Public Affairs in Bratislava and former Slovak Ambassador to the United States (1999-2003); Ivan Gabal from Prague, head of Gabal Analysis & Consulting and former head of the political analysis department under Czech President Havel; Gergely Pröhle, Senior Adviser at the International Centre for Democratic Transition in Budapest and former ambassador to Germany (2001-2003); and Eugeniusz Smolar, President of the Centre for International Relations in Warsaw. Jörg Himmelreich, Transatlantic Fellow at GMF's Berlin office, moderated the debate.

All four speakers described their countries as profoundly European and yet still very much in transition from post-Communism. The speakers pointed out that while formal institutional and political transformation of their countries has been completed, their societies still lag behind.  This is evidenced in the marginalization of minorities, the absence of independent media, as well as the persistence of political polarization, corruption and populism. However — and perhaps surprisingly for some listeners — all four also emphasized that two years of EU membership have changed the perception of Europe in the Visegrad countries. They suggested that attitudes to Europe and prominent neighbors like Germany have become far more positive, and that there is a genuine interest in promoting further European integration, for example European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). At the same time, there are many questions about the future direction of European foreign policy, and about the course to be charted by the German Presidency. None is of greater concern than Germany's relations with Russia, and their potential impact on Europe and the transatlantic relationship.

Panel two focused on the relationship between Visegrad countries and the European Union. The three speakers were Kai-Olaf Lang, researcher at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP); Eckhart Stratenschulte, director of the European Academy Berlin; and Ekkehard Brose, special envoy in the German Foreign Ministry for Eastern Europe. Volker Weichsel, co-Editor of Osteuropa, the magazine of the German Association for East European Studies, moderated. The critical note was more pronounced here: one speaker argued that the Visegrad countries still focus their foreign policy on territorial security, whereas their EU agendas are underdeveloped, and their impact on EU policy limited. Another agreed and suggested that a possible reason might be that the members of the group saw it only as an external pressure instrument, not as a means of moderating internal differences. In the ensuing lively discussion, the issue of Russia's resurgence and its possible impact on Germany's attempts to improve the EU's neighborhood policy (ENP) returned to the forefront. One central European participant suggested that Russia, rather than being changed through engagement (a reference to German Russia policy statements), was itself bent on containing Europe. A German countered that if this was the case, Russia was doing a spectacularly bad job — indeed, driving its neighbors into Europe's arms. The meeting ended on a conciliatory note, with several speakers asking how the Visegrad countries could help the German presidency achieve its objectives.