On 3 December the European Policy Centre, in the context of the Connecting Europe project, hosted a roundtable to discuss the reform of the EU leadership (s)election process. The roundtable brought together experts from across the EU with policy-makers from the EU institutions. They discussed the experiences of the EU leadership (s)election in 2019 and the need to revise the process before the next European elections in 2024. Although the Conference on the Future of Europe, which will start in 2020 and run for two years, has opened a window of opportunity for EU reform, it is by no means clear what exactly its format and mandate will be.

The roundtable took stock of the experiences of 2019 and the lessons learned, a possible reform agenda for the process and the prospects for the Conference on the Future of Europe. Speakers included Janis A. Emmanouilidis, EPC Director of Studies and Agata Gostyńska-Jakubowska, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for European Reform. The discussion was moderated by Sophie Pornschlegel, EPC Connecting Europe Project Leader & Senior Policy Analyst. EPC also presented its Draft Blueprint for the Conference on the Future of Europe, which was widely circulated and published here.