Prior to the regular TEPSA Pre-Presidency Conferences, TEPSA has a tradition of formulating recommendations to present to the incoming Council Presidency. At the Belgian Pre-Presidency Conference on 23-24 November 2023, TEPSA presented key recommendations to the then-incoming Belgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union. These recommendations are formulated by experts from the TEPSA network, without necessarily representing the views of TEPSA or its Member Institutes.

In addition to the introduction penned by TEPSA Executive Director Mariam Khotenashvili and Board Member Richard Youngs (Carnegie Europe), the Belgian Presidency was presented with four detailed recommendations: 

• “Strengthening EU security and defence in the era of geopolitical competition”, by Kristi Raik, Deputy Director and Head of the Foreign Policy Programme, International Centre for Defence and Security (ICDS);
• “Ukraine will decide the future of the European project”, by Fredrik Löjdquist, Director, Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies, Swedish institute of International Affairs (UI);
• “Four ‘C’s to move European economic security forward”, by Rem Korteweg, Senior Research Fellow, Clingendael Institute;
• “The EU’s migration policy cannot go back to square one”, by Camino Mortera-Martínez, Head of the Brussels office, Centre for European Reform (CER).

“The European Union is beginning to reflect on its Strategic Agenda for 2024-2029, with preparations for this new guiding document set to intensify during the Belgian presidency of the Council in the first half of 2024. It hardly needs saying that much has changed since the current Strategic Agenda for 2019-2024 was prepared. The new Agenda needs to do more than simply reiterate this truism and more tightly specify changes needed to EU strategies in light of the changing domestic and global contexts.”