On 27/28 November 2008 the members of the L’Esprit de Sel Group, an advisory group to Marek Siwiec, Vice-President of the European Parliament, met in Kiev, Ukraine. The Group, which includes Janis A. Emmanouilidis, Stavros Costopoulos Research Fellow at ELIAMEP, discussed the draft of a second report, which will be presented to the public in early 2009. The L’Esprit de Sel Group published its first report – Giving Globalisation a European Face – in May 2008.
This second report will concentrate on the future of the EU’s neighbourhood policy and the continuation of the enlargement process. A special emphasis will be given to the prospects of the Eastern Partnership initiative, which was originally proposed by Poland and Sweden and then endorsed by all EU members in the European Council.
On the margins of their meeting in Kiev the L’Esprit de Sel Group met Hrehoriy Nemyria, Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine, Arseniy Yatseniuk, former Speaker of the Supreme Council of Ukraine, and came together with representatives of leading Ukrainian think tanks working on issues related to the relationship between the EU and Ukraine.
The L’Esprit de Sel Group consists of Carl-Fredrik Bergström, Professor at Stockholm University and Deputy Director of the Swedish Institute for European Policy Studies (SIEPS), Janis A. Emmanouilidis, Stavros Costopoulos Research Fellow, ELIAMEP, Lykke Fries, Prorector, University of Copenhagen, and member of the Reflection Group chaired by former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzáles, Paul Hofheinz, President of The Lisbon Council, Gaetane Ricard-Nihoul, Secretary General of Notre Europe, Pawel Swieboda, Director of demosEUROPA, and Tamas Szemler, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for World Economy, Hungarian Academy of Sciences.