On 23 November 2023, the Recommendations from members of the TEPSA network to the incoming Belgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union were presented at the Belgian Pre-Presidency Conference.

BRUSSELS, 24/11/2023: On 1 January, Belgium will take over the Rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union from Spain. On the occasion of the conference “Towards the Next Strategic Agenda”, the Belgian Pre-Presidency Conference co-hosted by TEPSA and the Egmont Institute, a set of key policy recommendations are being presented to the key practitioners from within the Belgian government and administrative authorities.

As Belgium takes over the rotating presidency in January, its work on crucial files will set the context of the next five years of the European project, which will be kicked off by the June 2024 European elections and a new Strategic Agenda. In this context, TEPSA has coordinated its pan-European network to produce a set of crucial policy recommendations aimed at the incoming Belgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

In addition to the introduction penned by TEPSA Executive Director Mariam Khotenashvili and Board Member Richard Youngs (Carnegie Europe), the Belgian Presidency has been 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).

Theodora Gentzis, Director-General of DG Coordination and European Affairs at the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, while speaking on the subject of the Belgian Presidency at the conference, noted: “The challenges of the EU are important in many ways: we are confronted by global challenges and the EU’s place in the world has changed – we have an absolute necessity to reinvent ourselves to become more resilient, and to consolidate our core principles and values. In order to achieve these aims, our presidency will be organised in two parts, and will be a presidency of all the Belgian governments. The first part will be legislative, where we try to finalise as much as possible legislative files. The second part, we want to contribute to this reflection on the future of the EU, first with the Strategic Agenda, then with the longer term discussion on the future of the EU”.

You can read the Recommendations from members of the TEPSA network to the incoming Belgian Presidency here.

Press inquiries to: hugh.evans@tepsa.eu