Events

Europe and the EU

Clingendael | TEPSA Pre-Presidency Conference 2015
Europe/Amsterdam 04 2015 16:00
Bron: Downtown The Hague at Night / Flickr / CC / 2012 / Christopher A. Dominic
Inleiding

The Clingendael TEPSA PPC 2015 is a forum in which TEPSA member institutes and other EU think tanks discuss the priorities of the Dutch Council Presidency and other topics that are relevant on the current and future EU agenda with representatives from national and European political institutions, civil society, media and academia.

The full program can be found here.

Update 23 November 2015: 

Clingendael holds a fruitful and inspiring TEPSA conference.

On 19 and 20 November Institute Clingendael hosted the bi-annual Trans European Policy Studies Association (TEPSA) pre-presidency conference ‘Challenges and opportunities for the Dutch Presidency’, which took place at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

After TEPSA held its general assembly- in which the network discussed its future- the two-day conference took place with various panels that entailed a lively discussion on multiple relevant EU issues and the possible role the Dutch EU presidency (first half of 2016) could play.

On Thursday, deeper integration and better governance -  chaired by Michele Chang (Professor at College of Europe) - were discussed, involving institutional issues, Schengen and EU economic governance with contributions from Thijs van der Plas (Director of the European Integration Department at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Alessio Terzi (Affiliate Fellow Bruegel), Joséphine Rebecca Vanden Broucke (Head of Unit Directorate-General for Parliamentary Research Services European Council Oversight Unit at the European Parliament)  and Adriaan Schout (Coordinator Europe at Clingendael Institute).

In the evening TEPSA had dinner at Garoeda, accompanied with speeches by Katherine Watson (Director European Cultural Foundation) on the importance of European culture for harmony in our societies and Carlo Trojan (Member Advisory Council on International Affairs, former Secretary-General European Commission, former EU Ambassador to the WTO and UN organisations) on among other things his vision of the European Commission and EU leadership that gave food for thought.

On Friday morning a highly current panel was organised to give attention to the recent events in Paris and their implications for possible EU policies regarding foreign and defence policy, migration and security by Mark Rhinard (Senior research fellow of the Swedish Institute of International Affairs), Bibi van Ginkel (Senior research fellow at Clingendael Institute) and Isabell Hofmann (Project manager at Bertelsmann Stiftung).


Subsequently, in another panel led by Teija Tiilikainen (Director of the Finnish Institute of International Relations) the European Commission´s performance after one year Juncker was evaluated. This panel also included a discussion on the political and interinstitutional dynamics between Member States and EU institutions in which  Vivien Pertusot (Head of Brussels office at l'Institut français des relations internationales), Michael Kaeding (Professor at Institut für Politikwissenschaft, Universität Duisburg-Essen), Agata Gostyńska-Jakubowska (Research fellow Centre for European Reform) and Janis A. Emmanouilidis (Director of Studies and Head of programme European Politics and Institutions at European Policy Centre) were seated.

 

In the afternoon two parallel panels were held. One chaired by Katrin Böttger (TEPSA Board member and Deputy Director Institut für Europäische Politik) regarding  ‘The crisis at the Eastern borders of the EU’ with Ambassador Dirk Jan Kop (Special Representative for EU-Russia and the Eastern Partnership from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs) Steven Blockmans (Senior research fellow and Head of EU Foreign Policy CEPS) and Gunilla Herolf (TEPSA Board member and member of the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences) bringing matters into perspective.

The other panel concerned the ‘EU’s Asylum & Migration challenge’ in which chair Jaap de Zwaan (TEPSA Secretary General, Lector European Integration at The Hague University for Applied Sciences) could receive standpoints and perspectives on the issue from Roderick Pace (Director Institute for European Studies of Malta), Peter Bosch (Senior Expert DG Migration and Home Affairs at the European Commission) and Peter Diez (Deputy Director Migration Policy at the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice) in which also the latest European Commission relocation and distribution key proposal was dicussed.  

The conference was concluded with a plenary session named ‘Our union is in a bad state?’ by moderator Wolfgang Wessels (TEPSA Chairperson and Professor at University of Cologne) in which the chairs of the panels drew lessons from the conference and proposed recommendations for the Dutch EU presidency in a final discussion.

 An additional public event at Leiden University Campus The Hague was organized in which recommendations to the presidency were presented to Minister of Foreign Affairs Bert Koenders who also gave a speech and entered into a discussion with the audience.