On the occasion of the first Slovak EU Council Presidency starting on 1st July 2016, TEPSA in cooperation with the Institute of European Studies and International Relations of Comenius University organised its traditional Pre-Presidency Conference in Bratislava, on 2 and 3 June 2016.
The conference was part of the long-standing tradition of TEPSA’s Pre-Presidency Conferences (PPCs), which take place twice a year in the capital of the country holding the EU Council Presidency prior to the beginning of its mandate.
The main aim of TEPSA’s Pre-Presidency Conferences is to bring together academics and researchers from the broad TEPSA network, policy-makers, media and civil society in order to discuss the agenda and challenges of the upcoming Council Presidencies.
TEPSA Pre-Presidency conferences represent a major platform for communication and exchange between policy-makers and academia. Prior to the event TEPSA researchers formulate recommendations to be presented to a high-rank official of the government concerned in a plenary session. Moreover, the conferences actively involve civil society and media actors, who are able to interact with practitioners and academia. Finally, the insights gained during these conferences and seminars directly feed into future research on the EU and into EU policy making.
Thanks to their genuinely European and transnational nature and to the involvement of civil society, TEPSA’s Pre-Presidency conferences actively contribute to shaping a European public sphere.
The June 2016 PPC was also an integral part of the TEPSA’s PONT project, aimed at providing a bridge connecting young academics and EU practitioners, in order to improve the employability of young researchers.
The final programme of the conference can be found here.
The full report of the conference is available here.