Dr Lisbeth Aggestam participates in European Roundtable discussions on EU foreign policy at Wilton Park

4-6 November 2011

Dr Lisbeth Aggestam (Department of PoLIS) participated in a European Roundtable at Wilton Park 4-6 November 2011. Wilton Park is an executive agency of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. It aims to facilitate links between academics, think tanks and political practitioners on ideas and future strategies in foreign policy and global security.

The conference was organized by the German foundation, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, to discuss developments in European foreign policy since the Lisbon Treaty entered force on 1 December 2009. A major part of the Lisbon Treaty is devoted to reforming EU foreign policy to increase the coherence and effectiveness of the European Union as a global actor.

The Roundtable brought together 26 leading academics, parliamentarians and opinion-formers from Britain, Belgium, Germany, Ireland and Spain for two days of discussions. The Roundtable covered a range of highly topical issues on the European political agenda, such as:

• The new instruments of the Lisbon Treaty for EU foreign policy, particularly the role and work of the High Representative and the European External Action Service;
• Developments in the European Neighbourhood Policy and lessons learnt from the Arab Spring;
• The relationship between national parliaments and EU institutions;
• Conditions and possibilities for European defence cooperation, in particular the question of permanent structured cooperation, as stipulated in the Lisbon Treaty. Discussions also included the significance of the Anglo-French Defence Agreement, signed on 2 November 2010, for future efforts to collaborate on European defence.

The current financial crisis in Europe was obviously a very important backdrop for these roundtable discussions at Wilton Park.