Egmont – Institute for International Relations – is hosting a special event to present its contribution to the project New Pact for Europe. This project gathers several think tanks among 10 EU countries to discuss European Union’s future and current challenges. It was launched in 2013 by the King Baudouin Foundation and the Bertelsmann Stiftung, and supported by a large transnational consortium including the Open Society Initiative for Europe (OSIFE), the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the European Policy Centre, the BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt, and the Open Estonia Foundation.

It has the ambition to launch a European-wide debate on the potential rooms for reforms and improvement within the EU, with a particular focus on three specific policy fields: economy, migration and security policies.

At several occasions, the Belgian National Reflection Group (NRG) has met to reflect on the ‘state of the Union’ from a national perspective and discuss the main challenges the EU and its members are facing, taking into account both the European and national perspectives. These meetings opened-up with the first Belgian NRG meeting, held on the 26th of May 2016 in the presence of Minister Reynders, and has been followed by few others – among which two transnational meetings with the Finnish and Slovak delegations participating to the project.

These meetings have resulted in the finalization of a national report, presenting the outcomes of these discussions.

This report will be released at the occasion of this official launch on the 11^th of May and will be presented by the Director of the European Affairs Programme of the Egmont Institute, Alexander Mattelaer.

It proposes ideas and recommendations on how the EU and its members should react to EU’s main challenges and lays down how the EU and European integration should develop in the years to come.

It is the opportunity to share publicly the outcome of this long-lasting initiative and to explain the outreach and goals of New Pact for Europe.

Download and read the report.

 

Programme

17:00 – Registrations

17:30-19:00 – Launch of the NPE Belgium National Report

Moderator: Marc Otte, Director-general Egmont

Panel:

Mark Eyskens, Minister of State & Former Prime Minister of Belgium

Alexander Mattelaer, Director of the European Affairs Programme

Janis Emmanouilidis, Director of Studies, EPC.

19:00-20:00 – Reception