WATCH LIVE: Experts discuss Latvia's incoming EU presidency

Tomorrow, December 4th from 9:00-18:40 at the Tallink Hotel Riga, the large-scale Latvian EU Pre-Presidency Conference “Moving the Union forward: Involvement, Growth, Sustainability” will be held. 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 popularize our priorities and to find out how experts from other EU countries evaluate Latvia’s plans shortly before the beginning of the Presidency.

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

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; Common Digital Market; as well as energy security. The program can be found in the annex.
The conference will bring together the leading EU researchers and experts, including the former EU Commissioner for Development Andris Piebalgs; the Latvian Latvia's Ambassador-at-Large for the Eastern Partnership Juris Poikāns; MEP from Poland Jacek Saryusz-Wolski; the Vice President of the Rome Institute of International Affairs Gianni Bonvicini; Latvian Digital champion Reinis Zitmanis and others. The full list of the conference experts can be found in the annex.

Media are welcome to the press briefing, which will take place on December 4th from 13:00 until 13:30 at the Tallink Hotel Riga. You are also welcome to visit the conference panels and apply for individual interviews. Please contact the organizer Diāna Potjomkina: [email protected], +371 2888 3143. The following experts will take place in the briefing:

Andris Sprūds, Latvian Institute of International Affairs, Latvia; Sabina Lange, European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA), Luxembourg, was involved in the personnel training for Latvia’s Presidency. (will be confirmed); Ramūnas Vilpišauskas, Institute of International Relations and Political science, Lithuania; has especially focused 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.

In the framework of the conference, the TEPSA research network has published its recommendations for the Latvian Presidency: http://goo.gl/9ljnPY
The morning part and the Eastert Partnership discussion will be streamed live on www.esmaja.lv
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 Commision representation in Latvia, the Fritz Thyssen Foundation and the European Parliament Information Office in Latvia.