Thursday 31 March at 10.30 CET

Peter Ludlow will give his briefing on the European Council held last week on Thursday 31 March at 10.30 am.  If you or a colleague would like to attend please register so that we can send you an invitation to Google Meet.

Future briefings will be announced on this page. They are usually held on the Wednesday or Thursday morning after a meeting the previous week.  

Only subscribers to EuroComment’s European Council Notes published by LUP are invited. LUP sends notice of the briefings to all subscribers and those who wish to attend should register with celudlow@gmail.com.

The scope and character of the Forum

The European Strategy Forum has established itself as a preferred meeting place of top policymakers close to members of the European Council, the permanent representatives of the EU member states, senior officials in the EU institutions, ambassadors and other representatives of the EU’s more important global partners and leading figures in the business world, academia and the media.

Chaired until recently by Antonio Vitorino, Vladimir Drobnjak and Peter Ludlow, the ESF meets three or four times a year. Antonio Vitorino’s appointment as Director General of the IOM means that he can no longer act as chairman, but we are delighted to say that Frans Van Daele has agreed to take his place from January 2020 onwards.

One of several explanations of the Forum’s ‘uniqueness’- our members’ word not ours- is its composition and its size. Approximately two thirds of the 30/35 participants at every meeting are either current or recent insiders, who know how the EU system works and what it can and cannot deliver. We are always open to bold ideas in other words, but they are subject to a rigorous reality check.

Attendance at the ESF is by invitation only. However if you think that your company would both benefit from and be able to contribute to these confidential, high level discussions please contact us to discuss the possibilities.

Historians and other academics interested in the evolution of the European Union over time or at one particular period may like to buy some of the commentaries written since 2000. Peter Ludlow intends to edit and republish the whole series going back to 2000. However, if scholars have an urgent need for a particular paper or year of papers please send your request to celudlow@gmail.com.

EuroComment is a small publishing house not a library or university. Pre-summit briefings cost €10;  Briefing Notes which are much longer, often cover more than one meeting of the European Council and are based on extensive interviews and much fuller documentation cost €40.  A full year of publications costs €200.

See the complete list of EuroComment papers updated to December 2019.

Now that EuroComment publications are published and distributed by Leuven University Press please see LUP’s website for the latest publication in the European Council Notes. 

Not yet a subscriber? Prices and subscriptions on LUP’s website.

New publications (and occasional comments) will be tweeted at:
Peter Ludlow
@PWLEurocomment

EuroComment’s stock in trade is, and will remain, independent, well-informed analysis of EU politics at the highest level. Against the background of the euro crisis we launched a highly successful dialogue programme involving both public and private actors.

The centrepiece of this programme is a series of four or five dialogue meetings a year. Each meeting involves a working session of approximately 3 hours plus a working dinner of 2-3 hours. The number of participants will never exceed 25, of whom up to 12 will come from banks, pension funds, mutual funds and other investment groups, and 5-8 from the EU institutions and member state governments. There will also be up to 7 independent experts, including the chairman, Peter Ludlow.