Prior to the regular TEPSA Pre-Presidency Conferences, TEPSA has a tradition of formulating recommendations to present to the incoming Council presidency. At the Lithuanian Pre-Presidency Conference in Vilnius on 19 and 20 November 2026, TEPSA will present these recommendations to the incoming Lithuanian Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

Alongside an introduction penned by TEPSA Board Member Ilke Toygür (Global Policy Center and European Politics at the School of Politics, Economics, and Global Affairs, IE University), the Lithuanian Presidency is presented with the following recommendations:

1. “European defence needs resolve, resources and resilience to deter and resist the EU’s adversaries” by Ian Bond, Deputy Director, Centre for European Reform;
2. “Resetting the institutional software of EU foreign policy” by Giovanni Grevi, Senior Fellow, Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy, Brussels School of Governance;
3. “Enabling EU enlargement”:
   • “Restoring credibility to merit-based enlargement: qualified majority voting at intermediate steps”, by Mariam Khotenashvili, Executive Director, TEPSA;
   • “Making EU enlargement assessments and decisions more transparent and fair”, by Giselle Bosse, Full Professor in EU Democracy and Jean Monnet Chair in EU International Relations, Maastricht University & Associate Fellow, European Democracy Hub;
   • “Safeguard clauses can help sell enlargement to Member States, but they are only half the answer“, by Funda Tekin, Director, Institut für Europäische Politik;
4. “Threats posed to European societies by the manipulation of historical memory and revisionism“, by Imants Liegis, Head of the Security Programme, Latvian Institute of International Affairs.

“This will be Lithuania’s second Presidency of the Council of the EU. The first one was in 2013, and it was a whole different world. Still, in 2013 Lithuania took over the continuation of the euro crisis right after the Union’s “whatever it takes” moment. It was not easy back then, either. The country might be small, but its commitment to the European project is clear. Its emphasis on democratic values, the rule of law, and multilateral cooperation speaks directly to the challenges facing the Union. The Lithuanian Presidency will need to broker agreement among Member States while keeping the Union’s shared interests in view.“