Dear reader,

In many ways I feel that I am a lucky child. I had an amazing childhood unlike any of my friends. At the age of six, due to the second marriage of my mother, we moved from communist Czechoslovakia to West Germany. As our relocation was not considered illegal by the authorities, I was allowed to travel back to Czechoslovakia and thus to keep in touch with my friends, grandparents and my Dad's family. So, without being at first aware of its significance, I grew up naturally on both sides of the Iron Curtain. I went to school in Germany where I had my friends and then I spent my vacations with my Czech friends and my family in Czechoslovakia. The summers our family usually spent camping with my relatives from Belgrade at the beautiful Adria coast in Croatia (which back in the 1980s was of course part of Yugoslavia).

We were a patriotic Czech family and so as I was growing up I learned fairly quickly about the realities between "East" and "West". While my schoolfriends would have scary dreams of Count Dracula or Darth Vader, I usually dreamt of my experiences at the border crossing, of barbed wire, soldiers with Kalashnikovs, angry dogs and so on.

In my teenage years, besides singing in a rock band, I travelled a lot with my backpack, mainly in South-East Europe. And then, in the mid-1980s, it was the time of Gorbymania in Germany, which to me was a concrete hope for improvement in my home country. I quickly became consumed with the prospect for political change, I attended demonstrations in Prague and read as much dissident literature as I was able to get hold of. Thus, in many ways the year 1989 became a major breakpoint in my life.

After graduation from secondary school in April 1989 I travelled with a friend by car to the Soviet Union, Romania and to Hungary. We were quickly cured of Gorbymania in Russia, but then on our way back we miraculously witnessed the opening of the Austro-Hungarian border in September 1989. Thereafter we drove immidiately to Berlin when we heard the news that the Wall came down. A week later I was back in Czechoslovakia when the Velvet Revolution broke out.

Since then, building democracy and civic society in Central and Eastern Europe became a constant challenge for me both personally as well as professionally. I travelled extensively in Eastern Europe, learned new languages, made new friends, organised meetings, seminars and conferences with students on issues like the European Union and NATO. As part of my work in the students' association AEGEE I assisted in the organisation of a number of events on democracy and peacekeeping in the Southern Balkan Region. I then also became involved in the reconciliation process between Czechs and Germans, a task which I contributed to as a member of the intergovernmental Czech-German Discussion Forum. It was an exciting time and I am very happy I was able to be part of it.

In 1995 I graduated from University in Erlangen/Nuremberg and took up a position as aid coordinator at the European Commission Delegation in Prague. Coming back to Prague was as important to me as being able to do something concrete to help my country. With a budget of cca. 10 mio. Euro we were able to get some great projects going. I think I can frankly say, that I feel as being one of those "Eurocrats" who worked for the Commission with a vision to "build Europe". The idea of a unified Europe is a central long-term vision to me.

After four interesting years with the Commission, I left the administration in 1999 in order to have more space for independent research and my own work. I went to teach European integration at the Centre for European Studies at Charles University in Prague. In 1999 I also got married. With my wife Andrea we then spent a very interesting academic year in the USA, where I tought as a visiting professor at Grinnell College in Iowa.

In summer 2001 I received a Policy Fellowship from the Open Society Institute which helped me to return to Prague and engage in research about EU enlagement. In my paper I focused my research on the European Union and South-East Europe and I took a special interest in the case of Albania. I wondered to what extent the know-how with the European integration process could be conveyed from Central Europe to our partner countries, which are beginning to develop their relations with the EU. In my opinion, relations between the EU with South East Europe and especially the Black Sea Region will become increasingly important after 2004. In South-East Europe, we have to be able to repeat the successes we can see in Central Europe. To say it with another Central European, Erhard Busek, the Austrian Director of the South East European Initiative (SECI): "South East Europe needs incentives for action". Thus, here lies my next challenge.

In 2002 I spend a lot of time and energy on helping to set up a new think tank in Prague (Europeum) as a part of the Soros-supported network of public policy institutes. I also resumed teaching European Union politics courses at the Jean Monnet Centre of Charles University, the Anglo-American College and the University of New York in Prague (UNYP) as well as for the Diplomatic Academy at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I began to publish regular commentaries for Czech and foreign media and - most importantly - finally completed my PhD. at Charles University. In early 2003 I published my book about The Enlargement of the EU and the Czech Republic 1990-2004 (in Czech, nakladatelstvi Linde, Praha 2003), which analyzes in detail the accession process and the respective EU and Czech policies. In the summer of 2003 I am planning to move on to a new job in Brussels. And finally, on 20 September 2002 our daughter Elin was born, which was certainly one of the happiest moments of my life so far.