Core Network Activities
| The European Ideas Network operates through a combination of i) twelve working groups, devoted to key domestic and international policy questions, and ii) a major annual conference, a 'Summer University', which it holds each September, rotating around major European cities. The working groups address topics such as demographic change, reform of public services, external and internal security challenges, environment and energy, globalisation, job creation, the digital economy, and the geographic limits of the European Union. They attract prominent policy experts as their chairmen and rapporteurs. Operating on an annual cycle, they help develop new thinking, holding meetings in Brussels and other major European cities, feeding their conclusions into the EIN's annual summer university. The Summer University is a key element in the EIN design. It involves a mixture of roundtable meetings, plenary sessions and social events. Held each September in a different EU member state - Oxford in 2002, El Escorial in 2003, Berlin in 2004, Lisbon in 2005, Lyon in 2006, Warsaw in 2007, & Fiuggi in 2008 - this annual meeting has already emerged as a major event in the calendar of centre-right politics in Europe. Several hundred network members discuss major issues in a relaxed informal setting. Among major speakers at recent EIN Summer Universities have been Francois Fillon, Angela Merkel, Silvio Berlusconi, José Manuel Barroso, Hans-Gert Poettering, José Maria Aznar, Carl Bildt, Chris Patten, Anibal Cavaco Silva, Francis Fukuyama, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Jacques Barrot, Ashraf Ghani, Garry Kasparov, Craig Mundie, Ernest-Antoine Sellière, Laurence Parisot, and Lech Walesa. The EIN also acts as the framework within which a growing network of centre-right think tanks and political foundations work together across Europe. The purpose is to build a stronger and more self-confident community of public-policy researchers, and to provide a means by which they can contribute their thinking more effectively to the political process. Already over 35 organisations are part of the network and, under EIN coordination, they have created a number of Think-Tank Task Forces for joint research, presenting their results in advance at each EIN summer university. The EIN holds some of its WG meetings as joint seminars with centre-right think tanks in national capitals. It has for example held seminars in London (with Policy Exchange), in Madrid (with FAES), Stockholm (Timbro and Ratio Institute), Paris (Foundation pour l'Innovation politique, Institut Montaigne, and Fondation Robert Schuman), Berlin (Konrad Adenauer Stiftung), and The Hague (CDA Research Institute). |