More than 40 experts from Latvia and EU will discuss the incoming Latvian Presidency

Created on 2014-11-27

What are the main European Union’s challenges which the incoming Latvian Presidency of the EU Council will need to overcome? What are our own priorities and how we want to implement them? How other EU Member States look at this and what can they suggest? Answers to these questions will be sought in conference by more than 40 experts and policy makers from Latvia and 26 other EU Member States and candidate countries.

On December 4th the large-scale Latvian EU Pre-Presidency Conference “Moving the Union forward: Involvement, Growth, Sustainability” will be held in Riga. The event is organized by the Latvian Institute of International Affairs in collaboration with partners. This is a unique opportunity for Latvian policy makers and society to promote our priorities and to find out how experts from other EU countries evaluate Latvia’s plans shortly before the beginning of the Presidency.

The main themes of the conference will be the EU institutional and economic challenges, the EU's role in the world (including security, trade and development cooperation), EU relations with the Eastern Partnership and the Central Asian countries, Single Digital Market, as well as energy security.

The conference will bring together the leading EU researchers and experts, including the former EU Commissioner for Development Andris Piebalgs, the Latvian Ambassador-at-Large for the Eastern Partnership Juris Poikāns, the Vice President of the Rome Institute of International Affairs Gianni Bonvicini, Latvian Digital champion Reinis Zitmanis and others. Detailed programme can be found here.

Media representatives are kindly invited to the press briefing, which will take place on December 4th, at 13:00 - 13:30 at the Tallink Hotel Riga.

The following experts will take place in the briefing:

- Andris Sprūds, Latvian Institute of International Affairs, Latvia.
- Sabīna Lange, European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA, Luxembourg). Was involved in the personnel training for Latvia’s Presidency.
- Ramūnas Vilpišauskas, Institute of International Relations and Political science, Lithuania. Has focused especially on the analysis of Lithuania’s Presidency.
- Michael Koran, Institute of International Relations Prague, will introduce the TEPSA EU researchers’ network’s recommendations for the Latvian Presidency

Latvian-English simultaneous translation will be provided.
To visit the conference panels and apply for individual interviews please contact the conference organizer Diāna Potjomkina: diana.potjomkina@liia.lv, +371 2888 3143.

The conference is organised by the Latvian Institute of International Affairs in collaboration with the Trans-European Policy Studies Association (TEPSA) and THESEUS network, with the support of the European Commission representation in Latvia, the Fritz Thyssen Foundation and the European Parliament Information Office in Latvia.