Activities

The Forum meets twice a year in Ponte de Lima. These meetings normally take place during the Ascension Day weekend in May and the last weekend in September.

September Meeting - Setting EU Priorities

This meeting, will discuss EU priorities over the following twelve to twenty four months. There will be seven principal subject areas: the Lisbon agenda and the further development of economic policy coordination; the reform of the EU budget: energy and natural resources; freedom, security and justice; enlargement and its alternatives; the European security strategy; options and prospects for the EU constitution. The final session will be devoted to a debate about the Union’s political strategy in the light of the conclusions arrived at in the first seven sessions.

May Meeting - Thematic Conferences

The thematic conferences will normally begin on Ascension Day. These will consider the EU’s relations with a number of regions or countries of special interest to Portugal. The advantages of this geographical approach is obvious, because quite apart from the intrinsic interest of the areas concerned, a review of the EU’s relations with them is bound in every case to cover economics, security, migration and asylum policy, culture, and the new global order, including by no means least EU-US relations.

The first four topics to be covered between 2007 and 2010, will be: China and India; sub-Saharan Africa; Latin America; the Mediterranean.

Participants will on each occasion include specially invited guests from the countries and regions concerned.

The Forum will commission and publish substantial papers by leading experts in connection with every May and September meeting.

Other Activities

The Forum will also organise Quarterly Lisbon briefings on developments in the European Union.

Every session will be linked with European Council meetings. Given the status of the European Council as the core of the EU’s system of government, these briefings should enable those who attend to keep their fingers on the pulse of the Union. These meetings will normally take place in the European Commission’s Lisbon offices on the Thursday following the European Council. Founding members will receive subsequently both the electronic and printed versions of these reports.

Founding Members will also be entitled to one private ‘custom-built’ Board level Briefing per annum.