Lea Ypi is one of the most fascinating thinkers of our time. The wider public came to know her for her memoir Free – an astute reflection about coming of age in post-Stalinist Albania. Her speech on Judenplatz addressed a highly charged issue for democracy: more and more people are excluded from political participation due to their citizenship.

Since 2019, the Speech to Europe, initiated by ERSTE Stiftung, has been delivering fundamental reflections on Europe’s present and future. It takes place on Vienna’s Judenplatz as a reminder that Europe can only be understood against the shadow of its history. Following the American historian Timothy Snyder, the Ukrainian human rights activist Oleksandra Matviitchuk and the Israeli-German philosopher Omri Boehm, this year’s Speech to Europe was held by Albanian-British political scientist and philosopher Lea Ypi, who addressed migration and citizenship in the twenty-first century.

Read the entire speech here.

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