- March 05, 2021
Over the past four years, the transatlantic relationship has been severely strained. A multitude of conflicts have eroded trust and understanding. But despite recent turbulence, the United States, Europe, and Germany share common interests and values. Only by working together can we adequately address global challenges and reinforce our values and systems of democracies at home and globally. Now is the time to not only restore transatlantic relations but to evolve the partnership through dialogue and exchange as well as concrete projects for cooperation. This Laboratories of Democracy meeting focused on the common interests and challenges that can form the basis of renewed transatlantic cooperation and leadership in the upcoming years. Legislators imagined best-case and worst-case scenarios for transatlantic relations and explored the most promising areas of cooperation between the United States and Germany for the future, especially on the subnational level.
This closed-door webinar series is part of the “Laboratories of Democracy Initiative” which brings together German and American state legislators to facilitate a values-based discussion and an exchange of ideas about how to tackle current international policy challenges on a subnational level. In 2020 and 2021 due to COVID-19, Aspen Germany holds a series of webinars as part of a “Virtual Road to the Laboratories of Democracy Initiative” providing a virtual platform for exchange for the 2020/21 cohort. The webinar series explores subnational governance in the United States and Germany amid COVID-19, leadership in times of crisis, the role of tech in the COVID-19 response, and prospects for German-American cooperation. The project is supported by the Transatlantic Program of the Federal Republic of Germany, funded by the European Recovery Program (ERP) of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy (BMWi).
