Announcement: 1st Accession Exchange Forum

The New Europe Center kindly invites you to join the 1st Accession Exchange Forum, which is the main discussion platform of practitioners and experts for the EU accession of the countries of Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans.

The event will be held on November, 28-29 and will be streamlined online on the Facebook page and Youtube channel (1st day and 2nd day) of the New Europe Center and partner organizations.

Day 1 (November 28): 09:45 – 17:30

Day 2 (November 29): 09:30 – 12:30

Working language: English

Final agenda of the event will be available closer to the date.

The Accession Exchange Forum aims to provide a platform and encourage cross-country and multi-stakeholder networking to take stock of the accession process, good practices and lessons learned, as well as discuss new ideas and explore the opportunities in the relations between European Union, countries of Eastern Europe and Western Balkans.

This year Forum is a special one for several reasons. Above all, Ukraine and Moldova received the EU candidate status and Georgia the potential candidate status. This leads to the significant change of the topics to be discussed during the forum, although assessing reforms remains an important part of the conference.

This is also the reason why the Forum is now called Accession Exchange Forum instead of Association Exchange Forum, which used to take place for 4 years in a row until the last year. Getting into the group of EU candidate countries also entails that the geography of the discussions within the Forum will be much broader and will include, beginning with this year, the candidate countries in the Western Balkans.

The discussion panels will be devoted to the following issues:

EU candidate status for Ukraine and Moldova and potential candidate for Georgia: the road to membership
Western Balkans and Eastern Europe in one basket: reforms, perspectives, and synergies for speeding up the accession process
Parliaments’ role in the accession process: political consensus on accession reforms as a driver of success
Russian war against Ukraine: implications for the EU accession process
Staged accession and reform of the enlargement methodology: how to accelerate EU membership?

The Forum participants include:

High government officials from Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, responsible for coordinating the promotion of EU membership in these countries.
Leading experts and civil society activists with expertise in European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of the countries of Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans.
Members of European and national parliaments, European Commission officials, EU Delegation in Kyiv, relevant EU technical assistance projects, donor organizations, think tanks and academic institution

Among the speakers:

Olha Stefanishyna, Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine, Ihor Zhovkva, Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine; Matti Maasikas, Head of the Delegation of the European Union to Ukraine; Cristina Gherasimov, Head of Office of President of Moldova; Teimuraz Janjalia, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Georgia, Andrius Kubilius, Member of European Parliament, Prime Minister of Lithuania (1999-2000;2008-2012), Georg Ziegler, Deputy Head of the Support Group for Ukraine, European Commission; Fredrik Wesslau, Deputy Head of the EU Advisory Mission to Ukraine (EUAM); Ivanna Klympush Tsyntsadze, Chairperson of the Committee of the Verkhovna Rada on Ukraine’s Integration into the European Union; Levan Makasvili, Head of the Speaker’s Cabinet, Parliament of Georgia; Adrian Balutel, Member of the EU Integration Committee of the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova; Susan Stewart, Senior Fellow, German Institute for International and Security Affairs; Stanislav Secrieru, Senior Analyst at European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS); Iulian Groza, Executive director of the Institute for European Policies and Reforms (IPRE); Vano Chkhikvadze, EU Integration Program Manager at Open Society Foundation Georgia (OSGF).

The Accession Exchange Forum is organized by the New Europe Center in partnership with the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister of European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine, the International Renaissance Foundation, the Institute for European Policies and Reforms and the Soros Foundation in Georgia. The Accession Exchange Forum is taking place with EU support, within the EU-funded EU4USociety project implemented by the International Renaissance Foundation.