Target group
Public officials preparing to assume EU responsibilities, EU affairs professionals, people needing to quickly acquire a comprehensive familiarity with how EU decisions are taken.
It is run by experts with long experience of training in the EU institutions as well as in delivering practical support programmes for national officials.
Description
Participants are sent a set of concise preparatory materials to allow them to take full advantage of the course, which is based on cases and simulations.
The interactive face-to-face course first provides a framework for understanding EU decision-making by reviewing the basic principles and structures, and identifying the main institutional actors involved. It discusses the different phases in the EU policy cycle and illustrates each stage with recent examples. The elaboration of a Commission proposal is presented, with emphasis on public consultation and impact assessment. The course explains how a legislative proposal is then dealt with in the Parliament and Council, and the ordinary legislative procedure is illustrated by a case study. The final session reviews the system of delegated acts and implementing acts which are adopted at EU level in order to adapt or apply legislative acts, and the practical and institutional issues which have had to be addressed.
The course includes a group exercise as well as a role play, and uses multiple examples and real life cases.
In order to help retain and deepen the knowledge acquired, participants receive a copy of Edward Best’s 2016 book Understanding EU Decision-Making published by Springer with the support of the EU Publications Office, as well as enjoying access to an online forum.
Objectives
Participants will understand the principles and structures of the EU system and the basic competences and functioning of the EU institutions; they will be familiar with the different stages in the legislative cycle; and they will have an insight into how decisions are reached in practice.
